Without the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan theater in Paris in 2015, this book would never have seen the light of day. “Ivan and Ivana’s unique and tragic life” starts forgivably, but quickly tightens and becomes a bitter tale of humiliation, radicalization and terror. This is a satirical, entertaining and disturbing book. Alternative Nobel laureate Maryse Condé has throughout her 85-year-long life written extensively about slavery, racism and colonialisation. She grew up in the Caribbean, but has become a global citizen after many years in Guinea, Senegal, the USA and France. In 2018, she received the alternative Nobel Prize in Literature. It was the year when a scandal-ridden Swedish Academy was unable to award any prize. Swedish intellectuals took the initiative for a substitute prize, which thus went to Maryse Condé. Problematic sibling love It opens seemingly idyllically: The twins Ivan and Ivana grow up under the languishing Caribbean sun, with sparkling white sandy beaches and a shimmering blue sea. But we are far from paradise. The village is a den where a third are unemployed and even more live in poverty. Single mother Simone toils herself in the sugar fields. The children’s father, a world-famous musician from Mali, has not been seen since conception. With fresh characteristics, steadily translated by Synneve Sundby, Condé delivers various sizes in the local community. Neither priests nor politicians necessarily have pure flour in their bag. The descriptions of life in the French overseas region are visual – and educational. It is our time that she depicts, not a distant past. Equally, skin color is the islands’ foremost status marker. Ivan and Ivana are bound together more strongly than most twins. They love each other, and the attraction is as much physical as psychological. Their psychic grandmother sees red blood coloring the children’s future. Is it blood shame – incest – she envisions, or is it sudden death that fate has decided for them? The grandmother’s premonitions control the readers’ expectations. A prediction is not an uneven dramaturgical move. ALTERNATIVE WINNER: When Maryse Condé thanked for the award, she commented that an alternative Nobel Prize was needed for a Caribbean writer to win a prize of such great importance. Photo: CHRISTINE OLSSON / AFP The story of a predicted disaster Fate is also an important concept in the story. The word is actually in the original title, which reads “The unique and sad fate of Ivan and Ivana” (“Le fabuleux et triste destin d’Ivan et Ivana”). And the one who is destined to get hit after hit by life itself is Ivan. While Ivana is a school light who reads French classics and identifies with the former colonial power, Ivan is a troubled crow. Just as beautiful as her sister, but with abilities that he doesn’t have an outlet for. Frustration grows. When he is then taken into the heat of a substitute teacher with a personal revenge project on the West in particular and the world’s injustice in general, the goddesses of fate lightly but firmly pull the thread that snarls around Ivan like a string. True crime? Condé builds up the tension by letting the narrator address the reader directly with a kind of hindsight that says Here we are on uncertain ground or This we know for sure. The formulations give the impression that this is reality, a true crime. And who knows, maybe a terrorist’s background can be almost like that? Muslim radicalization For Ivan becomes a terrorist. Time and again he meets the wrong people and makes wrong decisions. In Mali, where the siblings travel after finishing school to meet their father, he is enlisted in the local militia and converts to Islam. Is religious radicalization to blame? Rather, I read Condé’s narrative as a judgment on the legacy of colonialism. Condé takes us to a sleepy suburb of Paris, to the Jungelen refugee camp, where African asylum seekers hope to cross over to England, and to the district of Molenbeek in Belgium, where Ivan travels to collect weapons. I find sympathy for Ivan, despite his destructive attempts to embrace life. Juxtaposed against him, Ivana becomes a shining figure who does not get as much to play on as her brother. I am surprised by that, since Condé is a feminist. But not before I think the thought, the narrator’s voice breaks in again and says that she understands very well that we react to this. But, she has to admit, it’s more fun to tell about Ivan’s action-packed life than about her sister’s self-sacrificing care of orphanage children. Irony, must know? Condé’s ironic and revealing gaze also provides valuable analysis of cultural differences between Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. Of course, trying to understand Maryse Condé does not defend terrorism. But she paints with more colors than black and white, as Moshin Hamid does in the unpredictable novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” or Yasmina Khadra in “The Sirens in Baghdad”. These books insist that living conditions in the world are unevenly distributed. Rather than an unequivocal battle script, Maryse Condé has delivered an awareness-raising story about the importance of respect across skin colour, religion and cultural background. It is both poignant, wistful and not least topical. news reviews Photo: Solum Bokvennen Title: “Ivan and Ivana’s unique and tragic life” Author: Maryse Condé Translated by: Synneve Sundby Publisher: Solum Bokvennen Genre: Novel Number of pages: 235 Date: 23 January 2023
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“Ivan and Ivana’s unique and tragic life” by Maryse Condé – Reviews and recommendations
