"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. "
The story as Gertrude told it sounded tedious. I knew the tone well. It was the voice she usually put on for outsiders when she decided to regale them with stories of her heroic past: her voice slightly raised, her nostrils slightly expanded, her eyes shining with a slightly fanatical gleam, but it was a mask. I knew that from old because a tale told in this mood was never the same. The events, the people and her own role were always different depending on the audience. This time it was just her and me, but she had slipped on the old mask and I knew she was concealing the truth. What memories was she trying to suppress, and why? (p.172)
Fear of Mirrors is a story of political and familial generations. At the centre is Vladimir “Vlady” Meyer, a former university lecturer. In the DDR, he was a dissident. In the new Germany of the Christian Democrats, his dissidence is not enough to save him. Vlady’s continued belief in socialism renders him undesirable, unemployable, an anachronism. Once again he is on the margins, this time without a job to sustain him.
Tariq Ali’s novel is to some extent about representations. Vlady’s character is oddly fluid, his voice merging at times into that of an omniscient narrator. The primary impression he gives is of tiredness; he seems lost and exhausted, although his past – and his present – speak of a tremendous capacity for strength. His son, Karl – a bright young thing in the SPD – is unappealing, careerist, bland. His mother Gertrude is a creature of the Revolution or perhaps more accurately of the Party; later we realise just to what extent the latter is true. Vlady himself is supposedly the outcome of her liaison with Ludwik, an Old Bolshevik who worked for Soviet Intelligence. Vlady has an estranged wife and, as the apparent cause of that estrangement, a former lover: a film director called Evelyne who has embraced the new decadent aesthetic to a degree that ought to be shocking, but is tedious instead.
At first, the novel seems like a straightforward parable. The stories of the central characters and their generations are told in sparse, elegant prose. We hop from 1990s Germany to turn of the century Vienna, from bourgeois Munich to revolutionary Moscow and even to Vietnam, through the introduction of Vlady’s friend, the cheerfully unethical and immensely wealthy Sao. We learn about the protagonists and their allegiances, their loves and sorrows, desires and resentments.
But as the central narrative progresses, the familiar threads connecting the characters begin to unravel, to tangle and to tighten in new and uncomfortable formations. Everything that seemed certain comes into question. Gradually the reader takes on the role of horrified observer as a new set of stories emerges, and with it a series of ever more terrible truths.
This is a novel with a profound sense of history, but the focus remains firmly on the fictional protagonists. Trotsky’s decline sends shockwaves through the narrative; it is no less poignant for remaining undescribed. Likewise, there is no dissection of the rise of Stalin, but his presence in the story grows and darkens until it casts a black shadow of its own. The advent of fascism is present in fire-scarred buildings, terrified children and discoveries – at second or third hand – of friends and relatives perished in concentration camps. We find things out as the protagonists do: through experience, through the grapevine, sometimes not at all.
Too often historical novels are written with an overbearing sense of what we now know. Fear of Mirrors is different, and this is its great strength. Although the prose is clean and fast-moving, this is not an easy read; it is disturbing, sometimes sickening, and always compelling. There is no comforting authorial didacticism to tell us what lesson we may take from it all, although the author’s sympathies do sometimes show through. But this is primarily a work of empathy. No matter how well you know the events in question, to read it is an education.
The edition reviewed was published by Arcadia Books in 1998 (ISBN: 978-1900850100)
A new edition of Fear of Mirrors will be released by Seagull Books in 2010.
Writing was developed independently in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and among the Maya in Central America. There are some areas where the question as to whether writing was adopted or independently developed is in doubt, as at Easter Island.