I enjoyed reading this book immensely, it was profoundly thought-provoking and worthwhile. Not least because I don’t know a lot about Chechnya and all of the strife there over the past 20 or so years, and I appreciate Marra’s having brought that to light.

I have too many assorted thoughts to really draw this book into something like a coherent review. But here are some of the wonderful things I noticed and appreciated:

  • The theme of pits and depressions is strong and very evocative. (I am lucky in that I happened to look up the meanings of the characters’ names; it turns out that “Dokka” is old Norse for a pit or depression.) These appear in the forms of cigarette burns, heads pushed into the snow, craters in the streets, and of course the Landfill.

  • Among other things this is a book about refugees, particularly refugees from what is basically ethnic strife. And in this sense it makes perfect sense that luggage should be such a vivid image cluster. There are three key pieces of luggage in the book, none of them particularly suitable to their purpose: Sonja’s roller, Khassan’s suitcase carrying he heritage, and Havaa’s “emergency” suitcase.

  • Surgery and drawing are set against each other in the most wonderful ways - witness the relationship between Sonja and Akhmed, and also between Sonja and Natasha. And what is interesting is the way that surgery is made out to be a sort of dehumanizing practice with little practical import, while drawing is a vital practice that brings its subjects to life - whether Akhmed’s 41 subjects, or his drawing of Natasha, or Natasha’s mural of city life. The ruminations on hands (Sonja’s, callused like a lumberjack’s; Dokka’s, brutally mutilated; and so on) reflect this contrast.

  • The Abrahamic scene at the end is wonderfully and ironically drawn. What I found most particularly poignant, especially for a book about refugees, is that the allusion to Abraham’s legacy is reversed. In the Torah this scene is followed by the memorable chapter in which Abraham is commanded to go to the land of his forefathers, where he will become the father to a great nation; but in this book Khassan abandons the land of his forefathers, with the promise of no more than a pack of feral dogs for family. (Granted - I don’t know much about the Koran’s take on this scene and what follows it, and I imagine that would be more relevant in this context.)

  • The theme of blurry family lines, of sons who are cheated of their rightful place and the like, is similarly biblically evocative, and particularly relevant for a book about Muslims. (The story of Akhmed and Ramzan is not too far removed from that of Esau and Jacob, if I recall properly.) I’m a little short on talmudic recall, and again have basically no koranic knowledge whatsoever, so I couldn’t really appreciate these story-lines as much as I’d have liked.. but I think they are exceptionally clever.

  • Ramzan is perhaps my favorite character, the unlikely tragic hero. His name is a sort of colloquialism for Ramadan, and the way in which he fasts in the presence of plenty is a perfect reflection of that name. His experiences in the Landfill are I think meant to be a kind of spiritual purification as well (although they are also attended, obviously, by a gruesome physical mutilation.)

  • There were a handful of images which I thought were just so wonderful: for example, the trapezoid of sunlight that Ramzan sees in his living room in the morning, shaped like a prayer rug. Likewise the slow burning of Khassan’s book.

  • The disjunction of time is a little tricky at first, but it works reasonably well. I also enjoyed that sort of small-scale fast-forward that we saw into minor characters’ lives here and there - a bit reminiscent of Run Lola, Run. I thought it placed the tragedy in its own kind of odd context, and allowed us to step back from the drama from time to time.

On the whole - this book is a wonderful read, even though its subject matter is disturbing and in some places, simply painful to read. There are a lot of fascinating ideas to contemplate here, and it’s certainly the kind of book that begs for a re-read.