Scan barcode
nemra's review against another edition
5.0
Unspeakable circumstances in which staying silent is not a betrayal, in which staying silent is a resistance, the most absolute evidence of commitment and friendship: stay silent and be destroyed.
erinsbooklogue's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
frejola's review against another edition
4.0
Gostei muito da escrita e do formato (capítulos curtos, cada um sobre uma memória). Não são bem memórias; é sobre a substância da memória, as suas fantasias, os seus engodos. A resistência do título se refere tanto à resistência do irmão do narrador em comer, quanto à resistência da memória em preencher sua função de lembrar do passado. Um livro que serve a boas discussões!
gerolencia's review against another edition
5.0
“Isto não é uma história. Isto é história.
Isto é história e, no entanto, quase tudo o que tenho ao meu dispor é a memória, noções fugazes de dias tão remotos, impressões anteriores à consciência e à linguagem, resquícios indigentes que eu insisto em malversar em palavras.”
Isto é história e, no entanto, quase tudo o que tenho ao meu dispor é a memória, noções fugazes de dias tão remotos, impressões anteriores à consciência e à linguagem, resquícios indigentes que eu insisto em malversar em palavras.”
lookitstoby's review against another edition
4.0
When you're one of three children, being one of three children is enough and you're already creating a multiple universe of complicities, exclusions and alliances.
helenahvg's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
lonesomereader's review against another edition
5.0
I bought this book several weeks ago but after far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil last week and I read author Julián Fuks’ powerful response in this Guardian article I felt prompted to prioritize reading his novel “Resistance”. It’s a very meditative story about the narrator’s reflections on his family history – in particular his adopted brother’s troubled life and his parents’ move from Argentina to Brazil after living under a tyrannical dictatorship. It felt ominously prescient when I came to the line “Dictatorships can come back, I know, and I also know that the arbitrariness, the oppressions, the suffering, exist in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of regimes, even when hordes of citizens march biennially to the ballot box”. But, of course, Fuks must have experienced and read about many shifts in leadership over the years to see how frighteningly quickly oppressive political leaderships can take control of a country. So yes, this is a novel about personal and political resistance to these tyrannical governments, but it’s more about a resistance to the categories and interpretations of history which diminish its reality.
Read my full review of Resistance by Julián Fuks on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Resistance by Julián Fuks on LonesomeReader
arirang's review against another edition
4.0
Longlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The judges' citation:
The Resistance, translated by the consistently excellent Daniel Hahn, from Julian Fuks' award-winning A Resistencia is the latest novel from the wonderful Charco Press. They are best known for the excellent Die, My Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker International and which we shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, but all 6 of their books I have read were strong, my favourite being Fireflies. Their mission statement:
The narrator/author is from a family of 5. His family, on the father's side, descended, many generations earlier from noted botanist Leonhart Fuchs, perhaps best known today for giving his name to the genus of plant - and subsequently the colour - fuchsia.
His parents were active militants in Argentina, and fled the military regime in the late 1970s, initially to Brazil where they ultimately settled as a compromise, the father having wanted to continue the struggle from Cuba, and the mother to start a new life in Spain. They had been trying unsuccessfully to start a family for some time, and just before leaving Argentina adopt a baby boy, just two days old, son of a 'little Italian girl' (the only biographical information they received), the baby rejected by its father and the mother rejected by her strict parents.
Later in Brazil, two biological children are born, the narrator and his sister. His brother was aware from a young age he was adopted, a decision the parents took due to an adoption in a previous generation of the family where the adoptee had only found out about their status when they came of age, and subsequently broke off all contact with their adoptive family. They also follow generally the theories of Donald Winnicott, the English paediatrician and psychoanalyst.
This novel is inspired by the narrator trying to understand his brother's feelings of frustration and distance, as an adopted child, now in an expanded family, and indeed to write generally about the topic of adoption, one he feels underexplored in literature.
However, in practice, he finds it hard, both to approach the topic and also to generalise his brother as a type. And he also spends much time writing about his parents, and their resistance to the dictatorship, as well as their new life in Brazil: one particularly awkward moment comes in 1978 while watching the infamous Argentina-Peru game that eliminated Brazil from the tournament (see e.g. https://www.channel4.com/news/dr-henry-kissinger-and-footballs-longest-unsolved-riddle) with their Brazilian friends, and their own split loyalties to their country (love for the country, hatred for the regime the tournament succeeded in promoting).
As he admits:
Sei que escrevo meu fracasso. Não sei bem o que escrevo. Vacilo entre um apego incompreensível à realidade - ou aos esparsos despojos de mundo que costumamos chamar de realidade - e uma inexorável disposição fabular, um truque alternativo, a vontade de forjar sentidos que a vida se recusa a dar. Nem com esse duplo artifício alcanço o que pensava desejar. Queria falar do meu irmão, do irmão que emergisse das palavras mesmo que não fosse o irmão real, e, no entanto, resisto a essa proposta a cada página, fujo enquanto posso para a história dos meus pais. Queria tratar do presente, desta perda sensível de contacto, desta distância que surgiu entre nós, e em vez disso me alongo nos meandros do passado, de um passado possível onde me distancio e me perco cada vez mais.
I know that I am writing my failure. I don't really know what I'm writing. I waver between an incomprehensible attachment to reality - or to the paltry spoils of the world we call reality - and an inexorable pull towards telling tales, an alternative gimmick, a desire to forge meanings life refuses to give us. But even with this double artifice I can't attain what I thought I desired. I wanted to talk about my brother, about the brother who emerged from out of my words even if he was not the real brother, and yet I resist this proposal on every page, I flee wherever possible to the story of my parents. I wanted to deal with the present, with this noticeable loss of contact, with this distance that has arisen between us, and instead I stretch myself out along the meanderings of the past, of a possible past in which I distance myself, and lose myself, more and more.
and he goes on:
I know that I am writing my failure.. I wanted to write a book that discussed adoption, a book with one central question, a pressing question, ignored by so many, neglected even by leading writers, but what would there be to say in the end?
... How could my brother possibly represent anyone else, if in this book he doesn't even represent himself.
And yet, although the story is specific to his family, Fuks does succeed admirably in making it of wider interest and applicability. One intriguing link is to the Grandmothers of the Plaza del Mayo, an organisation searching for their grandchildren, the babies of their disappeared daughters who were often not returned to their families but rather kidnapped and passed on for adoption (see e.g. http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor17.html): while he has strong reason to believe this was not the case for his brother, it does add an intriguing link between the themes of adoption and resistance to the regime.
Fuks had originally planned to call the novel “O irmão possível” [English: The Possible Brother] but his published dissuaded him from using it due to the similarity with Chico Buarque's O irmão alemão [The German Brother]. In my view La distancia que nos separa [The Distance Between Us] would also have, coincidentally worked well (note the quote above). But as Fuks explains in this interview, https://revistacult.uol.com.br/home/o-brasil-e-incapaz-de-refletir-sobre-seu-passado-diz-julian-fuks/, A resistência [Resistance] seemed to work well for what he wanted to express:
Having all this discussed at the end, with us showing up to critique the book, making observations, pointing out inaccuracies, it might be an ingenious device, but I can't say that it redeems anything.
Recommended.
The judges' citation:
Resistance, which has already won major prizes in Brazil, Portugal and Germany, marks the English-language debut of a writer who seems immediately important. Born in Brazil to Argentine parents, Julián Fuks engages with his own family history to write about the Argentine military dictatorship of the 1970s. It has been rendered into hypnotic English prose by the ever-reliable Daniel Hahn.There's always a sad tinge to your writing, she goes on and I notice a sense of hurt. I understand how attached you feel to intensity, but I'm not sure I understand why it's all got to be so melancholy. You don't lie the way other writers usually lie, and yet a lie is constructed all the same.
The Resistance, translated by the consistently excellent Daniel Hahn, from Julian Fuks' award-winning A Resistencia is the latest novel from the wonderful Charco Press. They are best known for the excellent Die, My Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker International and which we shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, but all 6 of their books I have read were strong, my favourite being Fireflies. Their mission statement:
Charco Press focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world. We aim to act as a cultural and linguistic bridge for you to be able to access a brand new world of fiction that has, until now, been missing from your reading list.This novel, like the previous Charco book I read, The Distance Between Us, is auto-fictional, based on the author's own family situation, albeit with some of the details changed.
The narrator/author is from a family of 5. His family, on the father's side, descended, many generations earlier from noted botanist Leonhart Fuchs, perhaps best known today for giving his name to the genus of plant - and subsequently the colour - fuchsia.
His parents were active militants in Argentina, and fled the military regime in the late 1970s, initially to Brazil where they ultimately settled as a compromise, the father having wanted to continue the struggle from Cuba, and the mother to start a new life in Spain. They had been trying unsuccessfully to start a family for some time, and just before leaving Argentina adopt a baby boy, just two days old, son of a 'little Italian girl' (the only biographical information they received), the baby rejected by its father and the mother rejected by her strict parents.
Later in Brazil, two biological children are born, the narrator and his sister. His brother was aware from a young age he was adopted, a decision the parents took due to an adoption in a previous generation of the family where the adoptee had only found out about their status when they came of age, and subsequently broke off all contact with their adoptive family. They also follow generally the theories of Donald Winnicott, the English paediatrician and psychoanalyst.
This novel is inspired by the narrator trying to understand his brother's feelings of frustration and distance, as an adopted child, now in an expanded family, and indeed to write generally about the topic of adoption, one he feels underexplored in literature.
However, in practice, he finds it hard, both to approach the topic and also to generalise his brother as a type. And he also spends much time writing about his parents, and their resistance to the dictatorship, as well as their new life in Brazil: one particularly awkward moment comes in 1978 while watching the infamous Argentina-Peru game that eliminated Brazil from the tournament (see e.g. https://www.channel4.com/news/dr-henry-kissinger-and-footballs-longest-unsolved-riddle) with their Brazilian friends, and their own split loyalties to their country (love for the country, hatred for the regime the tournament succeeded in promoting).
As he admits:
Sei que escrevo meu fracasso. Não sei bem o que escrevo. Vacilo entre um apego incompreensível à realidade - ou aos esparsos despojos de mundo que costumamos chamar de realidade - e uma inexorável disposição fabular, um truque alternativo, a vontade de forjar sentidos que a vida se recusa a dar. Nem com esse duplo artifício alcanço o que pensava desejar. Queria falar do meu irmão, do irmão que emergisse das palavras mesmo que não fosse o irmão real, e, no entanto, resisto a essa proposta a cada página, fujo enquanto posso para a história dos meus pais. Queria tratar do presente, desta perda sensível de contacto, desta distância que surgiu entre nós, e em vez disso me alongo nos meandros do passado, de um passado possível onde me distancio e me perco cada vez mais.
I know that I am writing my failure. I don't really know what I'm writing. I waver between an incomprehensible attachment to reality - or to the paltry spoils of the world we call reality - and an inexorable pull towards telling tales, an alternative gimmick, a desire to forge meanings life refuses to give us. But even with this double artifice I can't attain what I thought I desired. I wanted to talk about my brother, about the brother who emerged from out of my words even if he was not the real brother, and yet I resist this proposal on every page, I flee wherever possible to the story of my parents. I wanted to deal with the present, with this noticeable loss of contact, with this distance that has arisen between us, and instead I stretch myself out along the meanderings of the past, of a possible past in which I distance myself, and lose myself, more and more.
and he goes on:
I know that I am writing my failure.. I wanted to write a book that discussed adoption, a book with one central question, a pressing question, ignored by so many, neglected even by leading writers, but what would there be to say in the end?
... How could my brother possibly represent anyone else, if in this book he doesn't even represent himself.
And yet, although the story is specific to his family, Fuks does succeed admirably in making it of wider interest and applicability. One intriguing link is to the Grandmothers of the Plaza del Mayo, an organisation searching for their grandchildren, the babies of their disappeared daughters who were often not returned to their families but rather kidnapped and passed on for adoption (see e.g. http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor17.html): while he has strong reason to believe this was not the case for his brother, it does add an intriguing link between the themes of adoption and resistance to the regime.
Fuks had originally planned to call the novel “O irmão possível” [English: The Possible Brother] but his published dissuaded him from using it due to the similarity with Chico Buarque's O irmão alemão [The German Brother]. In my view La distancia que nos separa [The Distance Between Us] would also have, coincidentally worked well (note the quote above). But as Fuks explains in this interview, https://revistacult.uol.com.br/home/o-brasil-e-incapaz-de-refletir-sobre-seu-passado-diz-julian-fuks/, A resistência [Resistance] seemed to work well for what he wanted to express:
A resistência dos pais à ditadura militar é a mais imediata, mas há a resistência do irmão ao convívio familiar, a resistência do narrador ao contar essa história. Então tem uma série de resistências atravessando o livro e é aproximando dessa noção mesmo: de resistir como um ato simples de existência, existir e resistir como duas coisas muito relacionadas. Hoje está se fazendo muito esse trocadilho com o reexistir: voltar a existir. Resistir seria uma forma de voltar a existir. Gosto, especialmente, do que a palavra tem de ambivalente: resistência como algo negativo, como uma recusa a alcançar algo ou, pelo contrário, como um ato de força, de posicionamento diante de uma situação que exige uma tomada de posição. Eu gosto de pensar a literatura como capaz de fazer essa transição: do sentido mais negativo de resistência para o sentido mais positivo. Por meio da escrita a gente pode transformar uma resistência na outra.And the novel takes a meta-fictional turn at the end when he receives his parent's reaction to the novel - some of his mother's words open my review. They also point out certain inaccuracies and exaggerations, although he responds with parts he left obliged to leave out as real-life was stranger than fiction (e.g. it seems his parent's may actually have returned to Argentina, post fleeing the country, to pick up their adopted son). And his mother even comments on his plan to include this scene in the novel:
The resistance of the parents to the military dictatorship is the most immediate, but there is the brother's resistance to family life, the resistance of the narrator in telling this story. Then there is a series of resistances going through the book and it is approaching this very notion: to resist as a simple act of existence, to exist and to resist as two closely related things. Today there is a lot of talk about reexisting: to re-exist. Resisting would be a way to re-exist. I especially like what the word has of ambivalence: resistance as something negative, as a refusal to achieve something or, on the contrary, as an act of strength, of positioning in the face of a situation that demands a position. I like to think of literature as capable of making this transition: from the more negative sense of resistance to the more positive sense. Through writing we can turn one resistance into another. (from a decent translation by Google)
Having all this discussed at the end, with us showing up to critique the book, making observations, pointing out inaccuracies, it might be an ingenious device, but I can't say that it redeems anything.
Recommended.