Nigel Wright

Russian reflections The Brothers Karamazov

Back in September last year I came across a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky, at the Bradford Diocesan Resources Center (which is very good by the way - Kadugli House, Steeton if you are in the Diocese but have never used it)  -I wasn't looking for it at the time but it seemed to demand to be read! 

Well maybe not demand, but I am quite a fan of 19th century novelists, particularly as an aid to spiritual and theological reflection (they are usually very good novels too) andI had always wanted to read The Brothers Karamazov. As an aside, Tolstoy's' War and Peace ought to be a must for Theology, Sociology and History students (but then again I'm no academic scholar).

The Brothers Karamazov hasn't been a disappointment, quite the opposite, there is a wrestling with all issues of life, faith and belief that has something to say to all of us. Particularly fasciniating is how during this period of history everyone is wrestling with what it means to live in a secular age (as the dust finally settles from the reformation and counter reformation) and this has many echoes for today as people wrestle with what it means to live in the current secular age - but this time as we are moving from a secular age to a more spiritual/religious age. Think about it...

A surprise present for Christmas from Jo was Archbishop Rowan Williams' book on Dostoevsky,which I didn't know existed, but here is a taster from the introduction:

"Terrorism, child abuse, absent fathers and the fragmentation of the family, the secularisation and sexualistion of culture, the future of liberal democracy, the clash of cultures and the nature of national identity - so many of the anxieties we think of as being quintessentially features of the twenty first century are pretty well omnipresent in the work of Dostoevsky... The world we inhabit as readers of his novels is one in which the question of what human beings owe to each other  - the question behind all these critical contemporary issues - is lefty painfully and shockingly open... Yet at the same time, the novels insistently and unashamedly press home the question of what else might be possible if we - characters and readers - saw the world in another light, the light provided by faith.

That sums it up far better than I could, but I can't comment any further on the book as I have read no further than the introduction. Just about finished the novel, they are currently summing up in court for those who have read it!  

Novels like this can take a fare while to read but half an hour, three or four nights a week for a couple of months has been well worth it. A simliar commitment to watching Coronation Street, but much more powerful and thought provoking!

Where Three Roads Meet

Where Three Roads Meet is a wonderful retelling, in a contemporary setting, of the Greek tragedy Oedipus.

To try and explain the book would spoil a book that is full of wonderful nuances and surprises not least how one of the main characters, one Dr Sigmund Freud, happens to feature in the retelling of a Greek tragedy.

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It is beautifully written and the following catches a glimpse without giving too much away:

“- Dr Freud, you are an apt pupil. It is not that the timeless ones determine our universe, as some have falsely claimed; but that theirs is the vision of eternity, where time does not so much stand still as come full circle.”[1]

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As always with Salley Vickers, her books are thought provoking and encapsulate BIG questions.

I was introduced to the author by a lecture during Ordination training and read both Mr Golightly’s Holiday(2003) and then Miss Garnet’s Angel (2000) with great delight. Both are wonderful stories with biblical themes intertwined in a post-modern storing telling style.

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Where Three Roads Meet is one in a series of Myths retold in contemporary ways, other authors include Karen Armstrong, Michael Faber and Alexander McCall Smith. I’m very curious about Karen Armstrong’s story…

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[1] Salley Vickers, Where Three Roads Meet (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007), p. 146.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Post Ordination I am enjoying the chance to read a novel or two that has been on the back burner.

My Name is Red has caught my eye a few times but I finally got round to getting a copy just before Greenbelt and am captivated... in no small way...

As the reviews on the back cover testify to, it really does bridge a cultural gap between East and West, set in Istanbul in the late sixteenth century it is a "thrilling murder mystery... also a stunning meditation on love, artistic devotion and the tensions between East and West".

No surprise then that it won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006.

It is stories within stories, it has been described as a postmodern fable and it gets right to the heart of daily life in a world far far removed from twenty first century Britain, but then again, I'm not so sure it is so far removed....

Ragamuffin Visual

Now here is a book that really does deliver what it promises.

I hadn’t heard of the Ragamuffin Gospel until I caught sight of The Ragamuffin Gospel Visual Edition.

It would be unfair to try and describe something that works through visuals, but for me it is a “breath of fresh air”.

If you work through image as well as word, check it out!