Resistance by Julian Fuks
Here is a novel of considerable weight and brimming with human insight.
‘I visit the Museum of Memory, I walk down the ominous corridors, I allow myself to be consumed once again by the same tragic destinies, the same sad journeys.’ In Julian Fuks’ latest book, the Brazilian writer presents a pained and sombre family portrait. Against the backdrop of 1970s Argentina, a young family, fearing for their lives, flees the advances of the military dictatorship for a new life in Brazil.
Resistance is told from the point of view of the family’s youngest son, reflecting on the struggles of his parents and his siblings as they attempt to fit into their new lives. A stark and dialogue-free recount, it manages the complex balancing act of presenting these troubled lives with authority while allowing for the distortions of time and memory (‘I’m giving the occasion too much weight, a weight it never had in their stories’).
Resistance is slim, at just 150 pages, but in how it documents ‘the discreet echoes of time’, it swells into a deeply moving record of shattered lives. Its forensic examination of the past may prove too dark, perhaps too airless, for many readers. But for those who meet the challenge of its unwavering formality, here is a novel of considerable weight and brimming with human insight. Credit to Daniel Hahn, whose spirited translation is respectful of Fuks’ understated prose, and to emerging Edinburgh independent publisher Charco Press, whose lovingly presented edition is a thing of genuine beauty.
Charco Press, 4 Oct, £12.99