torsdag, april 14, 2005

Divided Kingdom av Rupert Thomson

För att få grepp om ett land som brakat av rasism och våld låter staten bygga ett nytt system som delar in befolkningen efter personlighetstyper, de fyra temperamenten. United Kingdom blir ett delat kungadöme. Murar byggs, taggtråd rullas ut.

Folk blir det dom förväntas vara. Om inte, så deporteras dom.

I Divided Kingdom blir en pojke bortförd från sin familj en natt under The Rearrangement. Han flyttas till The Red Quarter, kvarten för de kärleksfulla, lyckliga, generösa och optimistiska sangvinikerna.

Pojken växer upp och börjar arbeta för systemet och får då se de andra delarna av landet också.

Kapitel ett av Divided Kingdom.

Jag beställde boken efter att ha läst det här. I briefly considered trying to wrest control of the P.A. system from the flight attendant so I could read to my fellow passengers

Jag var som tejpad mellan pärmarna, fastän i en mardröm. Men jag förstod inte det med småflugorna på slutet.
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Rupert Thomson

Divided Kingdom. 2005. Bloomsbury. 416 s. ISBN: 0747572186

Only the other day, for instance, when I was correcting the galley proofs of my new novel, Divided Kingdom, I came across a sentence that stopped me cold. It went like this: Candles burned in windows all year round, memorials to those who had gone but were not dead. Those few words took me back to my first New Year's Eve in West Berlin. I went for a long walk that night. The air was very cold and still, and the streets smelled of the fireworks people had been letting off haphazardly all evening. I came across the wall purely by chance; I just turned a corner, and there it was, smooth, high, pale-grey. It looked, appropriately, like something that had no feeling in it whatsoever. It looked numb. There was a viewing platform nearby. I climbed the steps and stood there, looking past the watch-towers and barbed wire into East Berlin. All the houses that faced the wall had lit candles in their windows. It was something Berliners did every New Year's Eve, I later learned. It was their way of saying that they hadn't forgotten the people on the other side, people who had been taken from them, people who were now living in a different country, under a different ideology, people they might never see again.
Rupert Thomson

Divided Kingdom hemsida

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Rupert Thompson carves Britain up into four sections in his dystopian nightmare, Divided Kingdom. Recension i Observer

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I felt like Rupert Thomson left me hanging with my palm in the air trying to get the high five. Om Divided Kingdom på Bookdwarf

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One of the central dynamics of the book is Thomas's various attempts to work out the difference between what he used to be and what he has become. The trouble is, the previous version of himself only lasted eight or nine years, and never developed into anything concrete or mature. What he is trying to discover is something that is unformed - a potential. On the brink of believability. Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom