Tom's Reviews > Carnival

True open seriousness fears neither parody, nor irony,
nor any other form of reduced laughter, for it is aware
of being part of an uncompleted whole.
— Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World

So, I'll come back to this review when I have studied it in detail for my bachelor paper. Of course, most of you will limit yourself to a single lecture, and for those people who are simply interested in reading a wonderful book, I'll just list a few thoughts right now.

Rawi Hage has his roots in Lebanon, but is in fact a Canadian writer. 'Carnival' follows in the footsteps of François Rabelais and the 'carnivalesque' writing, in a sense that it presents a story that focuses on excess, decadence, and escapism through the use of masks, stories and whatnot. I'll just be blunt - it's a glorious novel, packed with lively stories and ideas. The real star of this book is the writing; fresh, rambling, often hilarious, Rawi Hage takes the reader on a sparkling taxi-ride through the lower and higher layers of society. To give you an idea, this is a passage about Catholics;

Well, Father, I think the only evil is you and your lot of delusional believers who make women suffer, who tell Africans to abstain from sex and not protect themselves. I believe you are a hater of misfits, a suppressor of clowns' laughs, scissors to the ropes of mountain climbers, chains to the wanderer, and a blindfold to the knower: a hater of men. But you are also a lover of yourself, a lover of power and buffoon dictators, a protector of arms dealers and thieves, pardoner of hypocrites with pious tongues and dirty hands…

It's a wild ride, slinging from one side of the spectrum to another. Main character is a taxi driver that we get to know as Fly, a vaguely delusional character, marked by his high interest in literature and his escapist episodes. 'Carnival' is not a realistic book, but it delivers what it promises - a Carnival of different lives, characters and styles that come together in a book that doesn't really have a plot, but is all the more unpredictable and enticing because of it. Not to mention the humour in this book, which was raw but enthousiastic.

It's not all comedy though. There's a whole lot of tragedy going on in this book which, even if veiled by the carnivalesque exuberance of the decorum, should leave the reader with some vital questions. A lot of the critique in 'Carnival', exaggerated as it may be, is actually valid and interesting food for thought.

In such, I'm looking forward to dig in to this novel for a more in-depth research. For those who are interested, I'll leave a more detailed analysis of this book below my review, later on. But in any case, 'Carnival' should find it's place on your nightstand some day. It's fresh, it's adventurous and does what fiction should do - entice, entertain and inspire.