The Patient Assassin – Anita Anand

On 13 April 1919, in Amritsar in the Punjab, British soldiers under the personal command of Brigadier General Reginald (Rex) Dyer, entered the Jallianwala Bagh, a seven-acre former walled garden that had become a dusty recreation ground and public meeting space. It was crowded that day. The usual gatherings to socialise and partake of the street vendor food were swollen due to a festival at the nearby Golden Temple, and by those come to hear an address promoting peaceful protest against British rule.

Political tension was high. The First World War was in the balance, and Indian troops were fighting on the front. Political gatherings had been forbidden, though the prohibition had been sparsely proclaimed. The soldiers did not order the crowd to disperse. They simply opened fire on Dyer’s orders, discharging 1,650 rounds of rifle ammunition in ten minutes of carnage before withdrawing, leaving five to six hundred dead and maybe three times as many wounded.

Eighteen-year-old Udham Singh was in Amritsar that day to do some business for a relative. He had been in the Bagh that morning but had slipped away to do the deal. When he heard the shots ring out, he returned to find his friends dead or dying. He swore revenge on the British Raj, as personified by Rex Dyer and his civilian chief, Lieutenant Governor Sir Michael O’Dwyer.

Udham Singh was a low caste orphan with no education or resources, and it took him twenty years, and many false starts, to get himself into a position to carry out his vengeance (though by then one of his targets had already died). He got the other one and willingly paid the price. This is no-spoiler, it is history and is revealed in chapter one - though personally being ignorant of the full story, I would have preferred that reveal to have been held back to the end.

Anita Anand, whose grandfather in similar fashion narrowly escaped the massacre, guides the reader through the history of Indian resistance and suppressed rebellion interweaving the personal stories of Udham Singh, Rex Dyer, and Sir Michael O’Dwyer with the geopolitics spanning the two world wars.

It is a well-written, interesting, disturbing, and fascinating account of a shameful colonial episode, not wide enough known. I recommend you read it.

His Bloody Project – Graeme Macrae Burnet

The novel is presented as ‘Documents relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae’ dated 1869. The case is one of murder. The documents are: first, some statements of witnesses to the crime; second, the perpetrator’s own extensive written account of events; third, medical reports on the victims; fourth, an extract from the memoir of the prison service doctor, a self-professed expert in criminal anthropology; and finally, a compilation of newspaper reports on the trial.

The brief witness statements tell of a violent murder in the Highland village of Culdie, committed by seventeen-year-old crofter Roderick Macrae. Quickly apprehended, Roddy uses his time in gaol awaiting trial to pen at length his version of how events unfolded and led him down the path of his bloody project. The medical reports deal quickly with the post-mortem examinations, and at more length with the murderer’s state of mind. This is his only defence – temporary insanity - and the trial reports show how that goes.

The format works very well. The prose while reflecting 19^th century dialect and phraseology, is never difficult to read and moves at a modern-day pace. Rural highland life is vividly portrayed, and the complex character of Roddy Macrae emerges gradually through his narrative. But does his account tell the truth? Does it accord with the evidence?

It is an engaging, engrossing even, read; and though there is no dispute whodunnit, the whys and wherefores maintain interest to the end. An unusual, clever, and moving piece of fiction that reads as anything but.

The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker

Troy has not yet fallen. But one of its satellite cities, Lyrnessus, has with predictable consequences. The women are taken as booty, divvied up among the conquering heroes, who have slaughtered their fathers, brothers, and male children in front of their eyes. The high-born, young, and beautiful go to the chiefs, the rest are left to the mercies of the rank and file.

Briseis, an attractive nineteen-year-old princess, is ‘awarded’ to Achilles in recognition of his prowess in battle. Chryseis, the fifteen-tear-old daughter of a priest of Apollo, is taken by Agamemnon, the king of kings. Others – lets name them, Uza, Hecamede, Iphis, Tecmessa – end up with the likes of Odysseus, Nestor, Patroclus, and Ajax.

It is Briseis who carries the narrative forward. She is used, no more than that, by Achilles, who reserves any emotional attachment for his close friend, Patroclus. It is only the latter who makes Briseis’ new life tolerable by treating her as a person rather than as a possession.

Life in camp is vividly portrayed - battles, feasts, rivalries, funeral games. All great fun until the rats come, carrying plague. Turns out that kidnapping the daughter of a priest of Apollo was not a great idea. Agamemnon has to make amends, return Chryseis to her father. He demands Briseis as a replacement. Achilles rages, complies, sulks, and withdraws from the fight. Disaster! The siege falters. And it is all the fault of Briseis. As she says, it’s like blaming the bone for a dogfight.

The focus on the life of the women behind the battle lines is insightful. Their choices – endurance, acceptance, embracement – in respect of their captors / clients / partners, is subtly explored. Even so, there is plenty of battle noise, blood, gore, death, and burials to keep it in context. And there is a moving climax, despite leaving things open enough to lead into the sequel.

Pat Barker is a fine writer and here gives a memorable voice to at least one of the girls previously silent. Roll on book two!

Zoo Quest to Guyana – David Attenborough

A topical, given the great man’s recent centenary, choice from the reading group, but at the same time a historic curiosity first published in 1956. In that decade, the Zoo Quest books (and TV series) covered expeditions to both film and capture animals from the wilds of Africa, Asia, and South America. This particular jaunt was to Guyana (though then called British Guiana), and this version of the book is in an abridgement contained in a 2017 compilation under the title, Adventures of a Young Naturalist.

The introduction places the Zoo Quests in their historic context as well as giving background to how a young TV producer with an unused zoology degree got his start in natural history broadcasting. And we know where that led.

As for the expedition, what comes through is its off the cuff nature. Get a plane here, hitch a ride on a passing boat there, rock up at a native village and bunk down in a spare hut. Catch a caiman (small alligator) with bare hands and stuff it into a sack; knock up a cage from an old packing case for an anteater; haul a manatee out of the creek and sling it onto the back of a truck. All done by a crew of three – Attenborough, a cameraman, and a seconded zookeeper.

Their adventures are told succinctly, with boyish enthusiasm and an easy charm that has become his trademark over the years. But my historic curiosity satisfied, I passed on the other two quests in the volume, to Indonesia and Paraguay.

The Forty Rules of Love – Elif Shafak

In 2008, in Northampton, Massachusetts, Ella Rubenstein, forty-year-old wife of David, has returned to work after a long lay off raising her three children. It is a part-time job, a reader for a literary agency, and the novel she has been sent to review is titled Sweet Blasphemy, by A Z Zahara.

She begins to read. It is set in thirteenth century Asia Minor, and concerns a young dervish called Shams of Tabriz and his quest to find a soulmate with whom he can share his belief that love transcends all religion.

Love is currently a sore topic for Ella. Her husband, who she thinks she loves, is a serial philanderer; and her eldest, though still young, daughter is threatening to wed her new boyfriend on the scanty basis of being in love.

The book toggles between Ella’s twenty-first century self-questioning and Shams’ thirteenth century pilgrimage of hope. The latter gets more airtime and paints a vivid picture of the time,  location, and lives led by a representative cast – warrior, zealot, drunk, student, beggar, harlot – that Shams encounters on his wanderings. When he meets Rumi, a respected poet and teacher, a connection is made and a fast friendship formed. This does not please some of Rumi’s family and followers. But Shams meets distrust, envy, enmity, and hatred with love. He has forty rules with which to disarm his persecutors, but will that be enough to save his skin?

Meanwhile, in 2008, Ella is entranced by the novel and is driven to contact the author. She is seduced by the concept of love trumps all and seeks a meeting with Zahara. How will that end?

The two parallel tales, love echoing down the centuries, command attention to the end. For me the forty rules intrude a little and were a bit preachy, but nevertheless this is an interesting read, expanding my knowledge to include dervishes, Sufism, and the real historical characters of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.

Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years – Sue Townsend

It is 2007, Adrian Mole has turned forty and is living at The Old Pigsty in Mangold Parva, Leicestershire with his second wife, Daisy, and daughter, Gracie. His mother and father, Pauline and George, live next door. His son by his first marriage, Glenn, is fighting in Afghanistan.

Adrian’s low-paid employment is assisting in Mr Carlton-Hayes second-hand bookshop, but his quest for literary success continues. He is writing a play, “Plague!” for the local am-dram Mangold Players which requires a cast of sixty humans supported by several animals, mainly domestic.

Other familiar characters drop in: old schoolfriend Nigel (now blind and gay); sister, Rosie, who plans to go on Jeremy Kyle to test  her paternity; half-brother, Brett, on the scrounge since his latest speculation crashed and burned; and, of course, Adrian’s first love, Dr Pandora Braithwaite MP.

On top of reporting how these, and more, impinge on his daily life, Adrian develops prostate trouble, and shares with black humour the trials of his diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.

The observational humour is as funny as ever as Sue Townsend juggles the storylines with skill and practised mastery. The diary format makes for an easy page-turning read, the temptation to push on one more day is hard to resist.

After a gap of twenty years since reading The Cappuccino Years, the characters fell easily back into place. Though read as part of my Book-et List, I discover the series is still incomplete having missed The Weapons of Mass Destruction! So, that is one checked off the list, and a new one put on.

Sunday at the Pool in Kigali – Gil Courtemanch

Bernard Valcourt is a Canadian, Quebecois to be precise, who has landed up in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, ostensibly to set up a national TV station. One of the drivers for the project is the urgent need to inform the population how to protect themselves and others from the AIDS epidemic sweeping the country. But the Government do not want to broadcast bad news, publicise their failings, so the job has stalled.

So Valcourt spends his day writing articles for foreign journals, but worldwide interest is minimal, not only in AIDS but also the growing tension and violence between the Hutu and Tutsi people who share the country in a powder keg mix. The Tutsi have post-colonial position and wealth, but the Hutu outnumber them greatly. There is history between them, and history will out.

But on a Sunday in Kigali, sat around the pool at the once plush Mille-Collines hotel, the great and the good congregate in well-guarded luxury. Mainly white – UN officials, economic advisors, bankers, ex-pat Belgians, diplomats who have drawn the short straw – but also those natives who hold government posts or contracts.

However, even in this civilized company, tension bubbles as high-up Hutus abuse any Tutsi staff with impunity. Among the staff is Gentille, a Hutu by birth and identity card but a Tutsi by her crossbred attractive appearance. Valcourt, decades her senior, is smitten. Gentille reciprocates, but is it love or an exit strategy, wonders Valcourt.

What follows is a heady mix of romance and terrorism, tenderness and torture, where sex is a murder weapon and mutilation a political statement. Valcourt, protected by his skin and journalist pass sees it all unfold. The country is physically beautiful and beguiling, but hate, corruption, and history lead the people tear each other apart, and soon there are more rivers of blood than water.

Told with restraint and resigned fatalism, this is a story all too real that should be read, even if it needs a strong stomach.