Three reviews

Reviews of The Promise of Iceland have appeared in the Sydney Sun Herald, The Gold Coast Bulletin, and The Toowoomba Chronicle. Reviewers' comments include:

"There are cycles within families, patterns in the generations, and there is a definite feeling of restlessness and uncertainty within mine," says Gislason..."There is also the business of inheritance, of asking what you are comprised of, and of finding ways through the chapters and secrets of your own story."

That story begins in 1970 with an ad in London's The Times newspaper for an English-speaking secretary. Gislason's mother answered the ad, secured employment among Iceland's Army of Foreign Secretaries and soon after found the arms of her secret lover.
Gislason retraces her steps and then his own over the years, taking this moving family saga from Iceland to England, Sydney to Brisbane, as all the time the weight of his secret becomes heavier.
"People who share secrets become confederates of a kind and I suppose that's what I had with my father and my mother," he says.
"It was a bond, but it was also an absence and something of a burden which, as time progressed, was stopping me from doing other things.
"I had to face my own story to truly understand myself and my parents and I hope the book will also allow people to understand my parents from their point of view."
The Promise of Iceland does allow that understanding.
It is an honest, contemplative and heartfelt journey across generations, landscapes and, appropriately for a land such as Iceland, the truth and mythology of family.

(Michael Jacobson in The Gold Coast Bulletin, 27 August 2011, p. 18)

*

THIS is a beautifully told journey by a man who was tracing his roots and discovering himself.The author was named after a character from one of the Icelandic sagas. He has written a doctoral thesis on concepts of authorship in medieval Iceland and currently lives in Brisbane. All his worlds have converged and this is his story about the directions and influences that empowered this. ... All the characters in his life are sincerely and perceptively portrayed and you will feel you know them all personally. The geographical and cultural details are illustrative and profound and this makes it all feel familiar.

(F. J. O'Dwyer in The Toowoomba Chronicle, 20 August 2011, p. 11)

*

Whether home is just the place we're born or a feeling we carry no matter where we end up, the age-old question remains: once you leave, can you ever go back? What if the decision to leave was not your own? Gislason's measured yet satisfying memoir charts his lifelong search for identity after leaving behind his birthplace of Iceland.

(Meredith Tate in the 'Extra' lift-out, Sun Herald, 18 September 2011, p. 6)

Leaving Zambia

I am sitting at the upstairs bar of Lusaka Airport. I flew in this morning from Livingstone, and then walked across the tarmac at the back of a cavalcade come to collect Michael Sata, who has finally won his long campaign to become president. The black Mercedes and the convoys of Land Cruisers that follow them have since been replaced: with each line-up of cars that goes, a new one arrives. I am watching the Tanzanian delegation step down from its Lear jet, the women dressed in bright orange and green; the Botswanan Lear jet is parked behind it; and now a third Lear jet arrives, unmarked. Must be the spies.

It's a day of change and thunderous car horn tooting. During the ten short days of my stay here, I have wondered at the endurance of Zambian car horns, and met only one person who openly supported the old government. For the most part the election period has been a peaceful one. I had thought that the endless calls for peace - from politicians, religious leaders, the media, and during the Dag Hammarskjöld commemoration - might in fact be a prelude to violence. Why else would everyone be going on about peace so much? But it seems not. Zambia may after all retain its reputation as the most peace-loving of African states.

When I was in Ndola for the Hammarskjöld commemoration, I got caught up in a political rally. Everyone had told me to avoid these, for fights flare up very quickly. But before I could get out of the way, I was surrounded by minibuses, all filled with young people hanging out of the windows, pretending to row with invisible oars, pretending their buses were canoes. To those like me on the street, they repeated what I later came to realise was the shorthand symbol of the campaign: they held their index fingers to their lips and went ssshhh. It means, 'don't tell them.' Don't tell the government, because we're taking their votes.

I hear that in the last couple of days, leading up to the announcement last night that Sata had won, there was unrest in the streets of Ndola - there are reports that shops and market stalls have been damaged. Apparently, the unrest was caused by perceived delays in the official vote count. Such was the suspicion that the election would be rigged, that any delays or irregularities in polling have been seen as government interference.

The locals refer to political unrest as 'noise'. It is a bit noisy in town, they will say. It was a bit noisy, too, when the minibuses surrounded me. But only noisy in a celebratory way: it was the loudness of anticipation, change. The crowd waved to me, and demanded a wave back. A day later I left Ndola, and today I leave Zambia. It may well be best to avoid political events, but in a way I wish I was going into town to join in the noise, to witness the celebration. It would be nice way to wave goodbye.

Ssshhh, says the man at the back

Road Marking #10: Ndola

On Sunday 18 September, the community of Ndola commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the plane crash that killed Dag Hammarskjöld and his UN team of 15 others in bushland some ten miles from the town.

Also present at the commemoration were the Vice-President of Zambia, the Foreign Minister of Sweden, the Swedish Ambassador in Zambia, and a distinguished array of military, civil, and community leaders. My seat was between the Generals and the District Commissioners. At least one of the local witnesses of the crash also attended, an old man who had been 25 when a friend had dragged him to the site. I spoke to him at some length, and will write more about that another time.

My favourite participant was Richard Hanguwa, site manager who was also MC for the day. Richard and I had met the day before, when he showed me around the site and let me in on the preparations. The commemoration had long been on people's minds, but in the end was something of a last-minute thing. It was to be a Zambian affair - they had taken owenership, as they say - with the Swedes and the UN in support roles.

While I was there, the tents arrived, the advance parties arrived, the police and security forces plotted out their plan for the next day, and then the hundreds of chairs arrived. At least 1000 locals would attend. Richard and I watched from the sheltered seats on top of the ant hill where Dag Hammarskjöld's body was found. The first President of Zambia used to sit here to think. Then we were joined by the UN Press Officer in Zambia, and the three of us gossiped and thought about the plan for the next day and for the future of not only the Dag Hammarskjöld memorial, but the small community of villages and farms that has come to be attached to it. After all the dignitaries had left, the 1000 locals would hold their own, informal commemoration. They would wander the site for an hour after the VIPs had gone.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace Studies, currently located at Copperbelt University in Kitwe, will soon be relocated to the site, and not far from here are the new campus of Northrise University and the brand new Ndola football stadium. Two schools are located next to the site. On the commemoration day, children from these schools stole the show, especially the youngest troop who, dressed in Swedish colours, sang:

For the love you showed for humanity, Daggy Hammarskjöld we love you
For the hope you gave to humanity, Daggy Hammarskjöld we love you
We want to thank you (thank you)
We want to thank you (thank you)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you...

They made me cry, and I found it a little hard to listen to politicians after they had finished. But the Swedish Foreign Minister was good. You felt that for the Zambians, this was in some part their crash. Yes, they did own it, in a way, and the Swedish partnership in the commemoration would always have its base in Uppsala. I must admit I too felt his presence more there than I did in Ndola.

The crash came three years before Zambian independence from Britain, and it helped Zambians frame independence in terms of Hammarskjöld's quest for peace in Africa, and in neighbouring Congo in particular. But the Foreign Minister reminded us that at the time of his death Hammarskjöld had been fighting two battles, one for peace in Congo and the other for the survival of the United Nations, at the time facing enormous pressure because of the Cold War.

I thought he could have added that there was, for Hammarskjöld, always a third battle, one witnessed by Markings. But I don't suppose this was the time to mention Hammarskjöld's silent inner conflicts. And maybe that was why the children's choir affected me so much: there was a pitch to their voices that recognised and matched that third battle, and acknowledged the contemplative side of a man who accused himself of doubts that he could never show the world.

I hope in his final moments in the bushland outside Ndola he allowed himself some peace from those doubts.

A choir from the Dag Hammarskjöld Community School

HRH Chief Mumena, Chair of the National Heritage Conservation Cmn

After the commemoration, locals inspect the memorial

Others inspect me

Steps that mark the spot where Hammarskjöld's body was found

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Overheard in Lusaka

In the rather partisan Times of Zambia today, news through that President Banda has agreed with traditional and religious leaders that people should pray for a peaceful election period. I think this is perfectly sensible.

But my favourite part of the story comes towards the end:

"[Secretary to the Cabintet] Dr Kanganja said the prayers should be held in the usual places of worship."

(Lusaka, September 2011)

Road Marking #9: Lusaka

Yesterday afternoon, after a long flight from Bangkok, I had one of those incredible first taxi rides in a new country, when you can’t quite connect yourself to the experience, or relate it to anything you’ve done before. 

The airport road:

But I was lucky. I had a driver who drew me into the world. He talked me through our sights all the way into town -- pointed out the plane delivering ballot boxes and observers for the election on Tuesday, the University of Zambia, the road to the President's house. He said it wasn’t any fun to walk along the airport road, because it’s so straight. You feel like you’re never getting there. Plenty were walking along it, though.

'What if I was walking along it?' I asked.

'I would stop and tell you to get a cab,' he replied. He then instructed me on the coming election. 'You're not here to help us with it, are you?'

'No, no, I'm not here for the election.'

It was on everyone’s minds. His own concern was that the two main candidates were too old. He wanted a young man in charge, like Barack Obama. Here a very big version of one of the posters that are everywhere:

I saw this poster on Church Road, where my odd but charming hotel is also located. Everything seems to look okay if you don’t touch it, then it comes off the wall. Church Road brought me onto Cairo Road, the main street in Lusaka. My guidebook had made me a little spooked about this area, but in fact it was gorgeous, with end of day busyness mixing across small groups who were standing, talking, watching (rather intently) what seemed to be the only tourist walking among them that afternoon.

And the light, ashen gold I suppose you could call it, the dirty red of the footpaths and roads lifted into an urban sunset.

When I got back to the hotel, I adopted again what may end up being my default mode for between-walks, and as in Bangkok I made meaningful the otherwise unfulfilled life of a local by asking them to take my picture.

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For the love of mopeds

I am in Bangkok, where I have a day in transit on my journey to Ndola. I arranged this stop-over because the coming flight to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, is a bit of a milk run taking in both Addis Ababa and Harare. A very long flight. All the same, on landing in Bangkok last night I wondered why I hadn't just pushed through. But not this morning.

What a sensational place this is.

The heat. And yet the men don't wear shorts -- only women and Swedish tourists do. Anyone who knows me, knows also that I am easily identifiable as not-Thai. But sweat is clearly another identifier. The locals are actually wearing cardigans today. I am not.

Cleverly camouflaged as a Swede

The girls, or rather the men who keep them. This has been less of a problem than I thought -- only a couple of street hawkers and my concierge have so far given me that dreadful wink, and in the case of the latter it was rather comically done. I was very tired, it was very late. 'What are you doing tonight?' he asked, with my backpack on his shoulder. Then he winked with both eyes, and in heavily inflected English and with a lisp no less said, 'I'll take care of anything else you need.' We both knew it was not his best pitch ever.

The powerlines. These are beautiful but deeply troubling creations. What I love is the way they are overtaking, almost as vines, the old apartment housing in the Silom area I'm staying in.

The dark, narrowing alleyways. Which aren't at all malicious, because at the end of each is an open area with a golden, illuminated Budha drawing the eye. And then you turn the corner to this:

And, of course, those mopeds. And these really are wonderful, because they tell you where to go. Simply put, anywhere you can cross the road safely is the right direction.

Sunday Mail 'Book of the Week'

The Promise of Iceland is the Brisbane Sunday Mail's 'book of the week'. Paul Donoghue writes, 'What could be a study in self-indulgence is instead a deeply charming account of displacement, of not really knowing where you come from and how that makes it difficult to know where you belong.'

(from the 'U on Sunday' lift-out in Sunday Mail (Brisbane), 11/9/11, p. 41)

In Conversation with Richard Fidler and Anita Shreve

On Thursday 8 September I was interviewed alongside the American novelist Anita Shreve for Richard Fidler's Conversations show on ABC radio. A podcast of the interview is available here.

With Anita Shreve (photo by Ursula Skjonnemand)

Hlídarendi

Adelaide Advertiser and Sunday Times (Perth) reviews

Reviews of The Promise of Iceland have appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser and the Perth Sunday Times. The former, by Penelope Debelle, includes this comment:

Icelanders love their country so much they are homesick even when they are there. The sub-Arctic landscape exerts an almost irresistible pull on Kari Gislason, who was born in Iceland but grew up in Australia...Kari's story of repeated trips to Iceland, his career as an academic specialising in Nordic sagas, and his final meeting with his extended family of half brothers and sisters is a powerful memoir about landscape and identity.

(from the 'Weekend' lift-out in the Adelaide Advertiser, 3/9/11, p. 29)

*

The piece in the Perth Sunday Times (by Brisbane-based reviews editor Fran Metcalf) is in the form of an interview and extended summary of the book, and describes The Promise of Iceland as 'compelling' (see the 'Weekend' lift-out of the Sunday Times, 4/9/11, p. 19).

Great Journeys: Graham Greene in Mexico

"People are made by places." (The Lawless Roads, p. 16)

The Lawless Roads (1939) by Graham Greene inspired Paul Theroux to observe that it's often the most difficult journeys that make the best travel books. Greene's journey was both of these things: an awful trip and a complex and ultimately brilliant work of non-fiction.

Greene got very ill. The means of transport was often terrible. He couldn't stand Mexico or for that matter the Mexicans whom he encountered. He got stuck with those Mexicans often. And when he finally reached the end of his trip it was to the news from his solicitor that he had been sued for libel over comments he'd made about Shirley Temple. He had every reason to grumble, and quite often in The Lawless Roads he does.

But it is a more profound type of difficulty that makes the book and the journey it represents great, and perhaps without this added dimension Greene's grumbling about the locals, their food, and the difficulties of the terrain could annoy. He had been sent to Mexico by the Vatican to report on the situation of Catholics, who had suffered under the rule of Plutarco Elisa Calles. Greene found plenty of evidence that the worst reports of killings, imprisonment, and other punishments were true. As a result, the author's depressed state as a traveller is in fact a rather light face for him to present as a social and religious commentator. His complaints about having to endure yet another terrible meal become a way of interrupting the much more dispiriting contemplation of a government that has become very cruel to its own people.

Out of that contemplation came Greene's landmark The Power and the Glory (1939), one of Time magazine's all time 100 novels. In fact, we first meet that novel's famous 'whiskey priest' of Tabasco in The Lawless Roads, and the two books share many questions, in particular how religious convictions exist and develop when there is a concerted and prolonged attempt to suppress them or replace them with new ways. The difficulties of the 'lawless road' were, in the end, illuminating ones for Greene, and his Christian convictions were much strengthened by the experience of seeing Mexicans maintaining theirs. The difficulties of travel may, in the end, have been fairly trivial. He made it back, and no doubt recovered well enough to enjoy even English food.

But the difficulties that came out of his journey were great. The worst journeys make the best travel books, because they are the ones that stay with you.

"I began to have a dim conception of the appalling mysteries of love
moving through a ravaged world." (The Lawless Road, p. 14)

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