Arnon Grunberg: Onze oom [Our Uncle]

The latest addition to my website is Arnon Grunberg‘s Onze oom [Our Uncle]. This is a long and quite complicated novel, set in an unnamed Latin American country where there is a war on terror going on. Major Anthony, known only by his first name and with an English name because of his father’s anglophilia, leads a small mission to arrest a couple suspected of aiding the terrorists. An inexperienced corporal inadvertently kills them, leaving a young daughter, Lina. Anthony notes on the record that she is dead and essentially kidnaps her as a present for his wife, as the couple have not been able to have children. The wife, however, is not grateful. After Major Anthony leads a convoy into the North, where military outposts seem to be surrounded and in need of help and does not return for a long time, Lina sets out to find her parents and ends up in the same Northern area, working in a gold mine and then having a child by a man known only as The Leader, who is in charge of the resistance to the military. It is an excellent novel, one of his best though, as yet, only available in French and German.