Final four foreign language 2014 releases reviewed

I have reviewed more current foreign language works this year (17; not counting pre-2014 releases) than I have in any previous year.  These works, published in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian, have included some nominees and winners for major literary awards (Premio Alfaguara, Premio Strega, Prix Médicis).  In the next few days, I'll list my favorites for the year.  But for now, here are capsule reviews of the final four 2014 releases that I read in French, Spanish, and Portuguese:

Christine Montalbetti, Plus rien que les vagues et le vent (longlisted for the 2014 Prix Médicis)

In her latest novel, Montalbetti continues exploring facets of American life that she conducted in earlier novels such as Western.  Here, the setting is the West Coast and as the title suggests (Nothing More than the Waves and Wind), the locale plays a substantial role in shaping the narrative.  Montalbetti's prose is evocative and the narrative sustains a steady flow throughout. While the characters at times take a backseat to the scenes in which they operate, for the most part the characterizations are well-realized as well.  Plus rien que les vagues et le vent was one of the longlisted titles that I had hopes for selection for the finalist round of the Prix Médicis and it certainly is one of the better French-language novels that I have read this year.

Valérie Zenatti, Jacob, Jacob (finalist for the 2014 Prix Médicis)

Set in French Algeria during World War II, Jacob, Jacob is the story of an Algerian Jew, Constantine, who is called to fight for his country in advance of the 1944 invasion of Provence.  It is a short, sharp tale of an innocent who will be forced to confront the terrible realities of a war in which ideologies play a role in shaping an understanding just what the stakes are.  Zenatti does an outstanding job in establishing her characters and the effects that the war will have on them.  Her prose is exquisite, eloquent without ever descending into maudlin melodrama.  The plot flows smoothly from beginning to end, with no longeurs.  Jacob, Jacob was one of my favorite non-English-language reads this year.   Hopefully, there will be an English translation of this excellent work in the years to come.

Fábio Fernandes and Romeu Martins (eds.), Vaporpunk:  Novos documentos de uma pitoresca época steampunk

This second volume in the Brazilian steampunk anthology series Vaporpunk contains nine stories that explore various elements of Brazilian and world cultures in relation to the notion of replacing current technological developments with those derived from an alternate, steam-based technology.  I enjoyed the majority of these stories, finding them to be inventive looks at our own contemporary societies and how certain historical developments shape our understandings of the world around us.  My only quibble about this otherwise very good anthology is that it's shorter than I expected, with only nine (albeit for the most part good) tales.  Despite this, this second volume manages to sustain the energy and momentum established in the first volume.

Mariano Villarreal (ed.), Terra Nova 3

This third installment in the Spanish SF anthology series perhaps may be the best in a series that has already garnered some of Spain's most prestigious SF awards.  Like the previous two volumes, Terra Nova 3 mixes in Spanish originals with translations.  This time, however, instead of the foreign stories being from Anglophone countries, there is a direct translation from Chinese to Spanish of a story by Cixin Liu, which happens to be one of the strongest stories in an anthology full of interesting takes on SF issues.  At nearly 350 pages on my iPad, Terra Nova 3 is one of the larger foreign language anthologies I've read this year and it is among the best.  My only complaint is that there could have been even more Spanish-language originals, as I am curious about SF being produced in Hispanophone countries, but this is a minor complaint in what was otherwise a very enjoyable anthology.

Fábio Fernandes, Os Dias da Peste

According to many, we exist today on the threshold of a "singularity" event, where advances in technology and how we relate to that technology will become so rapid and so widespread that in a matter of decades, some believe, human life itself may change so profoundly as to make it impossible for a person living today to understand an individual born fifty years from now.  Our perspectives, our "grounding points" for understanding our evolving world, all of that will change so completely as to make it as difficult to comprehend past and present as it would be for homo habilis to understand Snooki from Jersey Shore. 

OK, maybe it'll be more difficult than that, but there are those who believe that we may be on the cusp of developing true artificial intelligences.  How would these intelligences develop?  What about the advances in computer hacking, in computer viruses and "worms"?  What if instead of a world where a technological Garden of Eden may be emerging, what if we were instead living in the days of a new Plague?

These latter questions are addressed in Brazilian writer Fábio Fernandes' Os Dias da Peste (or [In]The Days of the Plague in English), which was released in Brazil in late 2009.  It is the story, told via Artur Mattos' journals, blog entries, and podcasts over a span of six years (2010-2016), of not just how the first AIs evolved, but also about our ragged and sometimes self-destructive interaction with technology.  In these dozens of entries spread over 183 pages, Fernandes explores how intertwined we have become with our technologies.  In a world where social networking has exploded over the past five years (after all, there will be several readers from around the globe who will recognize the name "Snooki" and have some concept of that person), problems do develop as much as wonderful solutions to the age-old problems of distance, language, and cultural barriers.  Artur expounds upon these problems, such as viruses, trolls, and the limitations of communication, in several of his entries, many of which are insightful and which felt more akin to personal essays than a fictional monologue recorded on a blog or podcast.  In reading several of these entries, I was reminded, not altogether favorably, of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, with its misanthropic character who questions the nature of the emerging society, although Fernandes' Artur is more sociable and the critiques here differ from those of that great Russian short novel.

I raise this comparison not to praise or to condemn Fernandes' story, but to note that Artur is such an odd character (compounded by the utilization of blog/podcast-type versions of chapters) that at times it is difficult to connect with him.  There were several times, especially when Artur was listing literally dozens of prominent philosophers and late 20th/early 21st century SF writers, that it felt more that Fernandes was just tossing in names to create an illusion of depth rather than trusting in Artur's character to develop those connections with societal concerns that the authors cited expressed in their writings.  Unfortunately, there were several times in the reading of Os Dias da Peste where the narrative flow grinds to a halt while the reader processes paragraphs-long citations of Artur's (and perhaps Fernandes') favorite authors.

In feel, if not so much in the actual dialogue, I was reminded of some of the earlier cyberpunk novels, which is not a surprise, considering Fernandes' background in translating of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.  This novel is not a straight-up updating of that narrative mode's concerns, although there are a few elements, particularly in the more direct discussions of how technology and human cultures have merged, where there is a sense of kinship to say a Neuromancer or Schismatrix.  Os Dias da Peste also shares with these novels a sense of hesitancy over the direction that we are taking, that perhaps with the coming technological glories there may also lurk a Trojan Horse of new ills that may spoil everything.  Fernandes explores this sense of unease in Artur's writings, but he wisely leaves things hanging in his conclusion to the novel.

On the whole, Os Dias da Peste is a flawed novel.  Although Artur was an interesting character, there were times that he seemed to "disappear" too much into the subject material of several of his entries.  As noted above, there were times that the narrative flow was interrupted by the rather too copious citations of American (in this sense, mostly from the US, but a few from Brazil and Argentina) SF literature, some of which contained surprising errors (such as citing Cory Doctorow as a US writer, rather than a Canadian one).  I sometimes had the impression that Fernandes did not "trust the story" as much as he perhaps should have, as there are several promising sections that do hint at a great novel.  But on the whole, I felt as if there were a semi-opaque barrier between what I grasped and what I sensed the story was moving toward.  Perhaps the language barrier could be behind some of this (although my understanding of written Portuguese is near that of my knowledge of Spanish now), but I believe this "barrier" deals more with the perceived flaws with the story execution than anything else.  Os Dias da Peste thus is a novel that contains some interesting ideas, but its flawed execution of those ideas make it less than the excellent novel it could have been.  I would recommend it for those who enjoy cyberpunk and more "hard" SF literature if it were available in English, but my recommendation cannot be as effusive as I wish it could have been.