The Invisible Land
Hubert Mingarelli (translated by Sam Taylor)
A Review
French novelist Hubert Mingarelli (1956-2020)
wrote several books, of which two, both of them war novels, have been
translated into English by Sam Taylor. Four
Soldiers, which tells the story of four young comrades in the Russian Civil
War, won the Prix Medici in 2003. The
translation of A Meal in Winter, set in World War II, was nominated for
the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
They are now joined by another World War II novel(la), Mingarelli’s last.
La Terre Invisible was originally published in 2019, and is now being
issued by Granta Books, also in Sam Taylor’s translation, as The Invisible
Land.
As war novels go, this is a strange one, being
set not during but in in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Its narrator is an English photographer placed
with a battalion of Allied soldiers. Following the liberation of a concentration
camp, the battalion settles at Dinslaken, in North-West Germany. The photographer, who cannot shake off the memory
of the dead bodies in the concentration camp, asks leave to go on a strange
mission around the surrounding countryside, photographing ordinary people in their
daily environment. He is assigned a car
and a driver, soldier O’Leary, who has just volunteered to join the army right
at the end of the war.
The point of the narrator’s project is not
clear, not even to himself. Perhaps he hopes that the scenes of ordinary life
will displace the terrible sight of corpses piled on top of each other. Possibly, he is seeking to understand, through
his camera, how ordinary Germans could have allowed the Nazi atrocities to take
place. Perhaps it could be his way of seeking
revenge. Certainly, the innocent request
for a photograph sometimes takes ominous overtones, as when he insists on
taking a picture of a young bride and groom despite their protests – it feels uncomfortably
like a violation.
O’Leary unsuccessfully tries to prise from the
narrator the purpose behind their mission.
But he also has his own secrets. Chief amongst them is the question why, back
in his hometown of Lowestoft, he preferred to sleep amongst the dunes rather
than in his bed at home. The final
scene hints at the answer and provides a satisfying conclusion to the narrative.
I had a look at the reviews of the original
French version and I was surprised at the low ratings given to this novel. It seems that readers’ reservations chiefly
refer to the story’s vagueness. But that
it is precisely what I liked about it. The
Invisible Land is a poetic book, and like most poetry, it does not divulge
its meanings easily. But there’s no
denying the power of the novel’s images, which will haunt me for a long
time: the narrator’s recurring dream of
corpses under tarpaulins; a repast in an abandoned church with clouds scurrying
across the window behind the altar; the car snaking its way along the
river. In understated and elegant prose,
brilliantly conveyed by translator Sam Taylor, The Invisible Land portrays
a land of ravishing beauty, tainted by unspeakable crimes.
Published: 05/11/2020
Granta Books
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