Anatomy of a Disappearance (original 2011; edición 2012)

Nuri is 12 when his mother dies, 14 when his father is kidnapped by political opponents and probably murdered; he spends the next few years shuffling between his English boarding school and the apartment of his beautiful young step-mother, Mona, on whom he is uncomfortably fixated. I liked the prose of Anatomy of a Disappearance—there were one or two of the more lyrical lines which didn't quite work for me, but otherwise Matar's style manages to be spare while also being descriptive and suggestive. That's quite a skill! However, I was disappointed by the overall story. I could have dealt with the lack of resolution of many of the main plotlines if there had been some sense of emotional growth or change on Nuri's part. Nuri is largely passive throughout, his character somewhat opaque even from a first person POV, and I was uncomfortable with many aspects of the construction of the female characters. There's enough promise in Matar's writing to make me willing to read more of his work, but I doubt that I will be returning to this particular book. ( )

Is it possible to be enthralled by the writing and yet left wanting by the story of a book? Of course it is - and that's what happened for me with Anatomy of a Disappearance. The story centers around Nuri, who is twelve years old when his mother dies. Within a year, his father has remarried a younger woman, Mona. Nuri has complicated feelings about that, at least partially related to his jealousy of his father because of his own crush on Mona. Everything changes, though, when Nuri's father is abducted while they are on vacation in Geneva. The circumstances surrounding the abduction - where he was taken from and why he was there, why he was taken, what happens now - are all part of what Nuri wants to know. However, Nuri is still just a kid attending boarding school in England and is limited in how he can follow up on those mysteries. Also limiting him is the tendency of everyone around him to avoid his questions, or answer with half-truths.

Reading this book is a sensual experience. Descriptions abound of small details: the quality of light, sounds, smells. Nuri is a keen observer of all those things, but he doesn't quite understand people, even by the end of the book, by which time he is twenty-four. I wanted more resolution on some threads but realize that the book's scope is the aftermath of the disappearance, and often in real life we don't get all the answers we want. Nuri's experience is defined by the fact that he's only left with the space his father should have filled and only able to examine the edges of his father's existence. Nevertheless, while I enjoyed the experience of reading the book, I can't say I felt satisfied by it.

Recommended for: people who enjoy beautiful writing, orphans, people who went to boarding school.

Quote: "So old and persistent did Mother's unhappiness seem that I had never stopped to ask its true cause. Nothing is more acceptable than that which we are born into." ( )

Parents are like gods to their children, immortal. However, when they die, or in this case disappear, it leaves a gaping hole.

Nuri is 12 when his mother dies. Only a few years later, his father disappears. At such a young age, it is difficult, if not impossible to reconstruct who his parents were when he never knows them as an adult. He is always kept in the dark of who they were. He doesn’t even know what his mother dies of or of what his father did for the King of Egypt. Realizing who they are after his father’s disappearance provides the most powerful aspects to the book.

Most of the book focuses on Nuri’s obsession with Mona, his step-mother. He meets her on a beach in Alexandria. Much of his adolescence is spent obsessing over her, in some cases, dreaming of being with her without his father. When his father is mysteriously abducted many truths about Mona, his mother, and his father are revealed.

I was originally under the impression that this story was timely due to the Arab Spring revolutions this year, highlighting the difficult environment of regime change and the resulting disappearance of loved ones. However, these events can take place anywhere. It could be Egypt, Iraq, Libya, or Chile, Mexico, Guatemala. It unites all these stories into one story of loss and searching. Maybe that is the intention, when someone disappears, not dies, but vanishes, how to deal with that loss. The feeling drives the narrative. A confused son with a missing father, who is trying to make sense of what happened, who he is, and who he is going to be. Common problems for any young man made more confusing with a lost father and only a young step-mother to look out for you. A stepmother whose involvement may have doomed the father and the son. A great narrative and emotional storytelling, but the background circumstances feel very generic.

Favorite Passages:

"All that I did not know about my father- his private life, his thoughts, why he was kidnapped and by whom, what he had actually done to provoke such actions, where he was at this moment, whether he could be counted among the living or the dead- was like a mask that suffocated me." p. 101

"But the most significant yet subtle change was in the eyes. The had become less certain, more wary. He seemed to have given way to the inevitability of his doubts." p. 183

"I felt dizzy, as if comprehending the scale of things, for the first time and with it the vast yet intricate reality of the physical world and my precarious presence in it. I held my head and stared at the blades of grass at my feet. I counted the stiches round the leather of my shoes. I wanted this world to still. I wanted to fix it and be fixed within it. But everything was on the move, the clouds, the wind." p. 186

"You see, most men spend a lifetime trying to understand their father. p. 194

"It was if, in the eleven years I had been gone, a terrible truth had disquieted the city of my childhood." p. 195 ( )

I read Hisham Matar’s first novel “In the country of Men” – a few years ago and absolutely loved it. It has been a long old wait for this one – but it has been worth it.

I have seen some great reviews of this novel – but feel I can’t really do it justice. How can I put across the absolute pathos and beauty of this novel?

Two things stood out as I read Anatomy of a Disappearance. First, there was the quiet power of the language, and the author's control of it. Second, there was Hisham Matar's ability to tell a story that from the first sentence seems inevitable, yet is full of surprises (Roddy Doyle )

A tenderly written novel with Shakespearean themes, it can be read as a deeply personal account of the losses that tyranny and exile produce (TLS

The story centres on Nuri a 12 year old boy as the novel opens –who is the son of a man living in exile in Cairo. After his mother’s sudden death Nuri’s father takes them on holiday to a resort in Alexandria – it is here they meet the beautiful Mona. Both boy and father are captivated by her. When his father marries Mona – Nuri is consumed with a mixture of complex feelings – one being envy. His father sends him to boarding school in England from where he continues to think about Mona and writes to her frequently.

Two years later there is another holiday – this time to Switzerland – a country his father travels to frequently. It is here that Nuri’s father suddenly disappears – is kidnapped apparently from the bed of another woman. Nuri and Mona are faced with the possibility that they didn’t fully know the man they love. His father had once worked for the executed King of their country – is an opponent of the regime that runs the country now. The country itself is never named in this novel – but it is clear it is Libya. Mona is convinced it is this regime that is responsible for her husband’s disappearance.

The disappearance of his father shapes the years that follow for Nuri – back at school his father’s disappearance is a secret he hugs to himself – not able to bring himself to talk about it even to his closest friend, Alexei. His relationship with Mona remains complex, but changes as the years pass.

“I began to feel I had been neglecting my father. I saw him waiting in a windowless room. I obsessed about what I could do to find him. I dreamed of him often.”

There is an added poignancy to this novel for me because I know that there is an autobiographical slant to it. Hisham Matar is the son of a political dissident who was opposed to the Gaddafi regime – the family lived in exile in Cairo and it was from here that Matar’s father was abducted in 1990. The family received news in 1996 that he was alive, and then nothing for many years. In 2010 Matar heard that someone had seen his father alive in 2002 in a Libyan jail.

The prose of this novel is beautifully spare, the whole is a haunting story of loss and memory, and I absolutely loved it. ( )

Det begynner å bli noen år siden jeg leste Hisham Matars første bok "Ingen i verden", hvor handlingen i all hovedsak er lagt til Libya. Den boka grep meg dypt, og allerede da jeg kom over Oversetterbloggens innlegg om denne boka for ca. ett år siden i tilknytning til kommentarer om alle urolighetene som pågikk (og fremdeles pågår) i dette landet, bestemte jeg meg for at jeg også måtte få med meg Matars nyeste bok når denne utkom. Og det på tross av at boka senere har fått en noe lunken mottakelse, som i NRKs omtale den 9. januar tidligere i år. Det er noe med at det er atskillig mer spennende å lese en middelmådig bok om og fra Libya enn fra Norge ... tross alt! Dessuten er Hisham Matar en forfatter det skal bli spennende å følge i årene som kommer, og da hører også "Forsvinningens anatomi" med! Denne boka har for øvrig klare selvbiografiske trekk, selv om den står på egne bein som en ren fiksjon.

Hisham Matar (f. 1970) er oppvokst i Libya, skjønt han ble født i USA og levde der til han var tre år pga. farens stilling som delegat i USA. I forbindelse med revolusjonen i Libya i 1979, hvor faren ble beskyldt for å være revolusjonær, ble familien tvunget i eksil til Egypt. Der vokste forfatteren opp. I 1986 flyttet han til London, der han etter hvert fullførte sin utdannelse innenfor arkitektur. Hisham Matars far ble i 1990 kidnappet i Kairo, politisk dissident som han var. Noen år senere mottok familien et par brev fra ham, hvor det fremgikk at han var arrestert av Egypts hemmelige politi og siden overlevert til regimet i Libya. (Informasjonen er hentet fra Wikipedia.)

Nuri har vokst opp i Libya, men i bokas åpningsscene bor han sammen med sin far i Kairo. De har flyktet fra Libya. Moren hans døde da han var 10 år, og dette har etterlatt et savn så stort at livet nesten ikke er til å holde ut. Faren hans er ikke flink til å vise følelser og langt mindre til å snakke om dem, og gutten overlates mye godt til tjenerskapet. Spesielt tjenestejenta Naima, som har blitt med fra Libya, har en egen plass i familien og spesielt i Nuris liv. Moren er et ikke-tema og det på tross av at både hun og faren elsket hverandre svært, svært høyt. I glimt ser Nuri tilbake på minnene han har om sin mor. Hun er alltid så vakker. Men de gangene han for eksempel var syk og trengte henne ekstra mye, overlot hun ham til Naima, som utrettelig satt ved hans side og pleiet ham til han ble frisk. Etter at moren døde, er faren mye bortreist. Han forteller aldri hvor han har vært, og Nuri får aldri vite hva han egentlig jobber med, eller om han jobber i det hele tatt.

Under en badeferie i Aleksandria treffer Nuri og faren Mona. Dvs. det er Nuri som treffer henne først, og han blir så forelsket som en 12 åring er i stand til å bli. Da han introduserer henne for faren, forelsker imidlertid disse to seg i hverandre, og Nuri føler seg både forrådt og forsmådd. Det var tross alt han som fant henne først. Med barnslig sjalusi betrakter han faren og Monas gryende forelskelse, som etter hvert ender med at de to gifter seg. Da får Nuri i det minste ha henne i nærheten. Inntil faren (og Mona) bestemmer seg for å sende ham på kostskole i England ... Tilværelsen faller nesten sammen for Nuri, men han reiser av gårde, slik det er forventet av ham. I sine mørke stunder ønsker han faren av veien, slik at han kan få Mona helt for seg selv. Og akkurat dette oppnår han i forbindelse med et ferieopphold i Sveits, hvor han og Mona skal komme noen dager før faren. Men faren kommer aldri, og etter hvert får de vite at han er blitt kidnappet mens han oppholdt seg hos en annen kvinne i Kairo. For sent innser Nuri at det ikke var dette han ønsket ... Hvordan skal det gå med dem nå som faren er borte? Lever faren eller er han død? Og hvem er egentlig Naima?

Det er sagt om denne boka at den mangler den nerven som var så intenst til stede i forfatterens første bok "Ingen i verden". Jeg kan langt på vei si meg enig i dette. For meg var magien i den første boka nokså fraværende i "Forsvinningens anatomi". På den annen side ble jeg drevet frem fra side til side, og jeg opplevde absolutt boka som spennende i den forstand at jeg måtte vite mer om hva som skjedde. Boka er dessuten godt skrevet, uten at jeg vil betegne den som stor litteratur. Den var for øvrig så lettlest at det var gjort på en-to-tre å lese den ferdig. I likhet med i "Ingen i verden", er det som skjer i herværende bok også sett gjennom et barns øyne. Savn, ensomhet, tomhet og meningsløshet i kjølevannet av de forsvinningene som finner sted - først moren, så faren - er godt beskrevet. Og bokas tittel - "Forsvinningens anatomi" - refererer til hva som skjer med dem som må leve videre etter at noen er blitt borte.

I og med at Hisham Matar på en måte har spesialisert seg på å skrive om Libya, med undertoner av politiske dramaer uten at dette nødvendigvis har det største fokuset, gleder jeg meg allerede til hans neste bøker! Litt synd riktignok at det meste av den litteratur som finnes om diktaturstater nesten alltid skrives av folk i eksil og ikke av dem som rent faktisk har levd midt oppi dramaet, men det er nå en gang slik det er, tenker jeg. Kanskje er det nødvendig med noe distanse for å skrive godt om såvidt dramatiske hendelser i historien? Alt i alt synes jeg at "Forsvinningens anatomi" er en meget lesverdig bok som fortjener terningkast fire.

Utgitt på engelsk: 2011
Originaltittel: Anatomy of a Disappearance
Utgitt på norsk: 2011
Oversatt: Toril Hanssen
Forlag: Cappelen Damm
Antall sider: 202 ( )