Fugue for a Darkening Island

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/fugue-for-a-darkening-island-by-christopher-prie...

This was one of Christopher Priest’s first books, published over half a century ago in 1972, depicting a near-future Britain with a populist right-wing government, over-run with refugees from African conflicts, and the consequent disintegration of the social order. It’s told through the viewpoint of Alan Whitman (“White man”?) who is frankly unpleasant; he cheats on his wife and on his travelling companions, not for the sake of any grand strategy but because he’s just that kind of guy.

Since the book was published, the topic of migration and refugee flows has become considerably more toxic than it was then. Priest is clear that the two things he show more had in mind while writing were the early days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which saw the biggest forced population movement in Western Europe since the second world war, and the expulsion of Asians from Uganda, many of whom came (and as it turned out integrated well) to the UK. Those were different times, and for us it’s impossible to read the book now outside the context of the 2015 migration crisis and the poisonous and dishonest rhetoric of recent years.

It’s not what Priest was getting at; he was looking at the disintegration of his own society under the shock of the future, a sort of It Can’t Happen Here, and mapping the disintegration of his protagonist’s household and family onto this social crisis. His target is not the refugees but the corrupt right-wing government that presides over the chaos. The narrative itself is disjointed, three different timelines (as a fugue has three different themes) jumping between several different phases of the crisis as things get worse.

I read this as a teenager and wondered how it would hold up. It’s all grimly credible from a 1971 viewpoint, but of course the world has moved on, and Priest revised the novel in 2011 to smoothe some of the parts that had aged less well. This is not one of his better known books – tenth on LibraryThing, fourteenth on Goodreads – but it was an interesting return. show less

This book is strange. Not in the plot or anything like that. It's strange because beyond the big theme pervading it (I can sum it up as racism vs tolerance, how absurd it is to try to stay neutral and also how difficult it is to remain tolerant in the face of horror), the main character's arc is kind of... pointless.

Spoilers (maybe)

The thing is, the main character (Alan Whitman) is not only unlikeable. You want to curse him for his inaction or stupidity at different points of the story, but I get that we're supposed to feel identified with his inaction in the face of coming disaster. But the fact that he remains so non-committed to any of the different postures regarding the war, the exiles, etc, just makes it seem... a little show more fantastic. Not even the most mild-mannered, wimpy academic would remain aloof from the atrocities and the injustices he sees.

The recurring flashbacks (or rather, back and forth jumps) try to show the time before, during and after the deluge of refugees that spawns the civil war and its horror. But it doesn't work, mainly because we spend too much time watching Alan stroll through his earlier life, focusing on women he pursued and trying to explain his distance from his wife. Is it really important to show he had a misguided sense of romance? No, I don't think so. Also, his wife is barely above two-dimensional, and the poor daughter of the pair (Sally) doesn't even get a couple of lines of dialogue. All of her actions are narrated, stripping her completely of agency and personality. That, to me, is the most egregious offense in the book. If some people mistook this story as somehow being racist, well, they're just bad readers. What it is is a truly sexist book. It's all about Alan, so we don't even care about what happens to the mannequin-like wife and daughter. For a book that's supposed to make us care for their plight, it fails horribly.

A shame, because I liked "The Affirmation" so much. But this is Priest's earliest works, so I'll just read the rest and see if they achieve the heights of that other book. show less

I came to Christopher Priest’s book while rummaging through the discount bin in a multimedia store. Intrigued by the image on the front and the description on the back cover that suggested extraordinary foresight for a work originally published in 1972, I decided to give it a try. While the book proved to be less prescient than I expected, it was no less interesting for it. Part of what engaged me was Priest’s way of scattering the three parts of his narrator’s account – corresponding to the various stages of an extended refugee crisis that causes English society to fracture – throughout the narrative, which forced me to piece together the events like assembling the portions of a jigsaw puzzle.

As I did so, I found myself show more questioning some of the elements of his story. The premise of a devastating war in Africa creating a global refugee crisis was a fine one, but I found myself questioning the presumption that England somehow bears the brunt of it, as is hinted at throughout the book. Nevertheless, his implication that the resulting crisis was caused less by the refugees themselves than the challenges in absorbing them did indeed show a real appreciation for a social dynamic that has played out all too often in the decades since. In the end, though, it is a book that should be read less as a warning of the future than a commentary on the social upheavals of the early 1970s that Priest cites in the foreword to the revised edition as the inspiration for the elements of his book. In that respect it accomplishes what any great science fiction work should, which is to shed light on the world in which live. show less

An unremittingly bleak novel in the vein of John Christopher's The Death of Grass or Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, but this one is altogether different. A nuclear holocaust in Africa finds 8 million refugees spread across the world, 2 million of which come to the UK. A newly elected racist government manages to turn the situation into a violent civil war; with the UN, Nationalits and Afram forces all mingled in a chaotic soup. Priest gives it a human face by setting it around a small family's struggles to survive. A couple with a daughter, stuck in a disintegrating marriage, suddenly forced to cope with the new reality. Priest doesn't pull his punches and this is a powerful piece that places you into the middle of the chaos, then show more buffets you along violently until you drop from exhaustion at the end. It's short at 125 pages, but more than long enough. show less

‘Fuga para un isla’, publicada originalmente en 1972, es una visión oscura y perturbadora de un futuro que, desgraciadamente, podría estar demasiado cercano. Christopher Priest se sirve del protagonista de la novela para plantearnos un posible escenario: África se ha visto asolada por una guerra atómica, donde los supervivientes, huyendo de la miseria y la radiación, buscan refugio en el Reino Unido. Los cargueros no hacen más que llegar repletos de inmigrantes africanos, alcanzando la cifra de los dos millones. Pero el estado, que en estos momentos está gobernado por un partido ultraconservador, no es capaz de buscar solución a este problema y sólo se le ocurren medidas represivas. El conflicto y la guerra civil son show more inminentes.

Alan Whitman, el narrador, que vive con su mujer, Isobel, y su hija, Sally, lleva una vida monótona y sin afecto hasta el momento de la llegada de los refugiados. Al poco tiempo, las casas son saqueadas y sus dueños expulsados de las mismas por los africanos y los que son afines a su causa. El resentimiento contra los negros no tarda en llegar, provocando la guerra civil. A Alan y su familia no les queda otra que buscar refugio allá donde pueden, entre personas de todo tipo. El infierno está servido.

La historia está narrada de forma fragmentaria, al más puro estilo new wave de la época, lo que hace que la novela sea un tanto confusa, aunque enseguida te acostumbras. Las diversas tramas van intercalándose, de esta manera sabemos de la infancia y adolescencia de Alan, de sus primeras experiencias sexuales, de su insatisfacción matrimonial, al mismo tiempo que se nos cuenta cómo fueron llegando los barcos de refugiados, y cómo es la vida posterior al conflicto, entre la barbarie.

No es la mejor novela de Christopher Priest, que tiene verdaderas obras maestras, como son ‘La afirmación’, ‘Un mundo invertido’, ‘El prestigio’ o ‘Un verano infinito’. Se trata de una distopía, deprimente y una tanto ambigua, aunque interesante. show less

Tough to get into at first, especially because of the way the timelines are threaded, but a compelling story once you get used to that. Prescient.

Can't help but laugh at the one-star reviews here by the scandalized who've only ever been presented with things they agree with.

This is one of those books in which the reader comes across language and imagery that is so offensive that one feels the need to warn other potential readers.

While parts of this book seem prescient":
"The emigrants headed for nowhere in particular . . . only away from Africa.
They landed in due course in countries all over the world: India,
France, Turkey, the Middle East, America, Greece. In the period of evacuation,
it was estimated that between seven and eight million people left Africa. In
the course of about a year, just over two millions of them landed in Britain.
The Africans, the Afrims, were welcome nowhere. But where they landed,
they stayed. Everywhere they caused social upheaval; but in Britain, where a
neo-racist government had show more come to power on an economic-reform ticket, they did
much more."
I found it nearly unreadable for the level of racism, sexism, and classism.

I am old enough to have been an adult when this book was first published and no, that context of the time does not excuse the level of racism and misogyny reflected in the writing. Throughout the entire book there is not a single completely realized female character, nor a completely realizted Black person, nor a completely realized member of the working class.

Yes, I am aware that the protagonist is not supposed to be likeable but the underlying attitudes of the author pervade the entire book. show less