Regime Change Dimitri Nasrallah Stages a Literary Coup D’État
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mtlreviewofbooks.ca • FREE/ISSUE 55 mSPRING 2018 MORbNTREAL REVIEW OF BOOKS Regime Change Dimitri Nasrallah Stages a Literary Coup d’État INSIDE PAIGE COOPER’S ZOLITUDE SUSAN ELMSLIE’S MUSEUM OF KINDNESS ELAINE CRAIG’S PUTTING TRIALS ON TRIAL MÉLANIE GRONDIN’S THE ART AND PASSION OF GUIDO NINCHERI SHANNON WEBB-CAMPBELL AT THE SALON DU LIVRE DES PREMIÈRES NATIONS mRb cont ents mtlreviewofbooks.ca SPRING 2018 Volume 21 No .2 Montreal Review of Books is published by the features young adult non-fiction 21 Clutch Association of English-language Publishers 4 Dimitri Nasrallah 18 Antigone Undone By Heather Camlot By Jeff Miller By Will Aitken of Quebec ( AELAQ ). 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Nicole’s work aelaq.org examines our need to revive our relationship to the natural world and expresses a bond between beauty and the absurd. Cover photo by Alex Tran PRINTED IN CANADA The Great Dictators BY JEFF MILLER • PHOTO BY ALEX TRAN he political turmoil of the Middle East has been the backdrop for much of Dimitri Nasrallah’s T work. He returns to it with a new perspective in his latest novel, The Bleeds . His two previous books explored the legacy of the Lebanese civil war, a conflict that Nasrallah witnessed firsthand. Both his debut, Blackbodying , and second novel, Niko , focus on the intimate “After writing about a child whose write” and that “a lot of pain went experiences of average people navigating corrupt life is altered by war, the greatest into Niko ’s crafting.” For The Bleeds , contrast of that experience would be he wanted to do something different. governments and military violence. In The Bleeds , focusing on the type of person who “I wanted to get outside of myself and however, Nasrallah goes straight to the top, train - controls the war,” Nasrallah tells me, change the process this time around.” explaining the transition in his writing Strongman leaders have long held ing his focus on the leaders who create those condi - from Niko to this latest work. Winner a place in Nasrallah’s imagination. tions. The novel examines a family dynasty of iron- of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fic - “To some degree I’ve always had this fisted dictators with the chillingly apropos surname tion and longlisted for the prestigious kind of persona [in mind], shaping the International IMPAC Dublin Literary events that resulted in me moving so of Bleed, tyrants motivated solely by self-interest Award, Niko charts the epic journey many times as a child,” he says. One and profoundly unconcerned about the citizens of a child displaced by conflict, draw - of the guiding questions of his writing ing from Nasrallah’s own childhood process was “how did they come to they rule. Set in a fictional Middle Eastern dictator - experience fleeing Lebanon. His fam - be so far removed from the people ship on the eve of its own Arab Spring, the novel ily spent time in Kuwait, Dubai, and they affect?” Greece, before finally making their One needs to look no further than represents an important transformation in home in Canada. Nasrallah acknowl - the opening scenes of the novel to find Nasrallah’s fiction. edges that it was “a difficult book to answers to this question. Nasrallah’s 4 dictator perfectly fits the image of the From the reader’s perspective, it is ian regimes are perhaps the most far- post-colonial strongman. Mustafa clear that a lightly fictionalized ver - reaching embodiments of structural Bleed has led the country his father sion of one country’s travails would patriarchy that we have,” Nasrallah founded with an iron fist through not have served this novel. Nasral - observes. Even when facing threats to eight mandates, suppressing the na - lah’s goal isn’t simply to mock one their personal safety for speaking tion’s ethnic minority and lining his dictator, but rather to satirize the idea truth to power, the fierce women in pockets with money from public cof - of the strongman, as well as the inter - this novel persevere in denouncing fers. He is petty, vain, and completely national powers that allowed them to the Bleed regime. “Women do so out of touch with the people he rules. flourish in the post-colonial era, much of the thankless pushing He begins his day in his private heli - whole cloth. A satirical country wor - against the status quo in society,” copter, admiring the landmarks of the thy of Swift, Mahbad gives us a clear- Nasrallah says, and so he knew that capital city. Among them is an enor - eyed view of how dictatorships are “the elements of progress in the novel mous statue of his father in Revolu - Potemkin states, built to impress the needed to be female, as a push to - tion Square, as well as “the Bleed eye of the dictator only, and ulti - ward a wider future for all.” cinemas, the Bleed National Library, mately hollow. Mahbad is a portrait The Bleed regime is destabilized Bleed Stadium.” The country, it of political power gone awry. over the course of the novel, but the would seem, was built in his own The counterweight to the self- prospects for real change in Mahbad image. obsessed myopia of Mustafa and are uncertain at the book’s end. But he is ailing. Following a major Vadim are the fictional news articles Nasrallah believes that reports of the stroke, the octogenarian has handed interspersed throughout the novel’s death of the Middle East dictator over the presidency first-person narra - are greatly exaggerated. “Calls for to his only son, The Bleeds isn’t a mere tives. Articles from change result in chaos, create a power Vadim, a coked-up the state-funded vacuum, which is then readily filled in playboy with zero burlesque of a dictatorship, daily newspaper by more military intervention. … The political instincts. gone rogue and an reality is, in the end, nothing substan - Young and inexperi - but is instead a fierce independent blog tial changed beyond the deepening of enced, Vadim is a political satire with give us a glimpse disillusionment.” As the novel closes, pure narcissist. He of street-level life only one thing is certain: that laugh - has little interest in real teeth. in the capital. The ing in the face of dictators offers a his native country decision to include brief consolation from the horror of or the monuments these fictional arti - their crimes. mRb that bear his family name. We first cles and to set them apart on the encounter him riding home in his page, mimicking newspaper design Jeff Miller is the author of the short story limousine after voting for himself in features such as mastheads and collection Ghost Pine: All Stories True . yet another rigged election. Instead of columns, emerged early in Nasrallah’s looking forward to his next mandate, creative process. They allowed him to Vadim retreats into his memories, re - create what he calls “a different kind living his glory days as a race car of novel, one actively engaged with driver on the Formula One circuit. the larger cultural phenomenon of Confident that his father is arranging using language to actively shape … his victory, the thought of losing the the world.” When Mustafa delays election never crosses his mind. announcing the election results, these The Bleeds isn’t a mere burlesque news sources capture the people’s of a dictatorship, but is instead a outrage at his flagrant abuse of fierce political satire with real teeth.