French novelist Hubert Mingarelli (1956-2020) wrote several books, of which two, both of them war novels, have been translated into English by Sam Taylor. Four Soldiers, which tells the story of four young comrades in the Russian Civil War, won the Prix Medici in 2003. The translation of A Meal in Winter, set in World War II, was nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. They are now joined by another World War II novel(la), Mingarelli’s last. La Terre Invisible was originally published in 2019, and is now being issued by Granta Books, also in Sam Taylor’s translation, as The Invisible Land.

As war novels go, this is a strange one, being set not during but in in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Its narrator is an English photographer placed with a battalion of Allied soldiers. Following the liberation of a concentration camp, the battalion settles at Dinslaken, in North-West Germany. The photographer, who cannot shake off the memory of the dead bodies in the concentration camp, asks leave to go on a strange mission around the surrounding countryside, photographing ordinary people in their daily environment. He is assigned a car and a driver, soldier O’Leary, who has just volunteered to join the army right at the end of the war.

The point of the narrator’s project is not clear, not even to himself. Perhaps he hopes that the scenes of ordinary life will displace the terrible sight of corpses piled on top of each other. Possibly, he is seeking to understand, through his camera, how ordinary Germans could have allowed the Nazi atrocities to take place. Perhaps it could be his way of seeking revenge. Certainly, the innocent request for a photograph sometimes takes ominous overtones, as when he insists on taking a picture of a young bride and groom despite their protests – it feels uncomfortably like a violation.

O’Leary unsuccessfully tries to prise from the narrator the purpose behind their mission. But he also has his own secrets. Chief amongst them is the question why, back in his hometown of Lowestoft, he preferred to sleep amongst the dunes rather than in his bed at home. The final scene, besides providing a satisfying coda to the narrative, hints at the answer.

I had a look at the reviews of the original French version and I was surprised at the low ratings given to this novel. It seems that readers’ reservations chiefly refer to the story’s vagueness. But that it is precisely what I liked about it. The Invisible Land is a poetic book, and like most poetry, it does not divulge its meanings easily. But there’s no denying the power of the novel’s images, which will haunt me for a long time: the narrator’s recurring dream of corpses under tarpaulins; a repast in an abandoned church with clouds scurrying across the window behind the altar; the car snaking its way along the river. In understated and elegant prose, brilliantly conveyed by translator Sam Taylor, The Invisible Land portrays a land of ravishing beauty, tainted by unspeakable crimes.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/07/The-Invisible-Land-by-Hubert-Mingarel... ( )

French novelist Hubert Mingarelli (1956-2020) wrote several books, of which two, both of them war novels, have been translated into English by Sam Taylor. Four Soldiers, which tells the story of four young comrades in the Russian Civil War, won the Prix Medici in 2003. The translation of A Meal in Winter, set in World War II, was nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. They are now joined by another World War II novel(la), Mingarelli’s last. La Terre Invisible was originally published in 2019, and is now being issued by Granta Books, also in Sam Taylor’s translation, as The Invisible Land.

As war novels go, this is a strange one, being set not during but in in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Its narrator is an English photographer placed with a battalion of Allied soldiers. Following the liberation of a concentration camp, the battalion settles at Dinslaken, in North-West Germany. The photographer, who cannot shake off the memory of the dead bodies in the concentration camp, asks leave to go on a strange mission around the surrounding countryside, photographing ordinary people in their daily environment. He is assigned a car and a driver, soldier O’Leary, who has just volunteered to join the army right at the end of the war.

The point of the narrator’s project is not clear, not even to himself. Perhaps he hopes that the scenes of ordinary life will displace the terrible sight of corpses piled on top of each other. Possibly, he is seeking to understand, through his camera, how ordinary Germans could have allowed the Nazi atrocities to take place. Perhaps it could be his way of seeking revenge. Certainly, the innocent request for a photograph sometimes takes ominous overtones, as when he insists on taking a picture of a young bride and groom despite their protests – it feels uncomfortably like a violation.

O’Leary unsuccessfully tries to prise from the narrator the purpose behind their mission. But he also has his own secrets. Chief amongst them is the question why, back in his hometown of Lowestoft, he preferred to sleep amongst the dunes rather than in his bed at home. The final scene, besides providing a satisfying coda to the narrative, hints at the answer.

I had a look at the reviews of the original French version and I was surprised at the low ratings given to this novel. It seems that readers’ reservations chiefly refer to the story’s vagueness. But that it is precisely what I liked about it. The Invisible Land is a poetic book, and like most poetry, it does not divulge its meanings easily. But there’s no denying the power of the novel’s images, which will haunt me for a long time: the narrator’s recurring dream of corpses under tarpaulins; a repast in an abandoned church with clouds scurrying across the window behind the altar; the car snaking its way along the river. In understated and elegant prose, brilliantly conveyed by translator Sam Taylor, The Invisible Land portrays a land of ravishing beauty, tainted by unspeakable crimes.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/07/The-Invisible-Land-by-Hubert-Mingarel... ( )

Hubert Mingarelli was a brilliant writer of short fiction and this is the third novel of his I read this year. His previous books, set during the Russian Civil War and the Second World War, tell simple stories of small groups of men, with the horror and violence of conflict mostly in the background. This book, set in Germany in the weeks following the Allied victory in 1945, is quite similar. It tells the story of a photographer who decides to take a road trip with a British army soldier. He has decided to take pictures of German families, posed in front of their homes. He never explains to his driver or to us why he is doing this; it is not clear if he knows himself. Though a very short book, it moves slowly as nothing much happens. The two men drive around, they eat their rations, they sleep in their car, they experience the weather, they meet a few Germans. It is the least interesting of the three Mingarelli books, but probably still worth reading as he’s always a thoughtful writer, full of compassion for his characters. ( )

It came as a shock to learn from the dustjacket of The Invisible Land that Hubert Mingarelli (b. 1956) died in January 2020. It was only last year that I discovered his writing... thanks to Tony from Tony's Book World, I read and reviewed A Meal in Winter (2012) but I have Quatre Soldats (Four Soldiers, 2003) on my French editions TBR, and I know Mingarelli as the author of perfect little novellas, which meditate on the culpability of ordinary people in war. It is sobering to think that there will be no more new books from this writer, though perhaps there will be more translations of his work. I hope so.

The ordinary people of The Invisible Land are the two main characters, an unnamed photojournalist who narrates the story, and O'Leary, the young soldier assigned to him as a driver. But there are also the ordinary German people who are the subject of the photographer's quest across a desolate landscape. WW2 is over, and the British battalion is assessing the situation in North-West Germany at Dinslaken, where there had been a labour camp. The horrors of the camp are not the focus of the narrative: it's their effect on the people who have to deal with the aftermath which is so powerfully conveyed.

Colonel Collins, the English battalion commander, is barely in control of his hatred, his distress about the atrocities he has seen economically conveyed in his response to a request for shoes:

'They all ask me for something,' he said. 'But I make them understand that there's a time to keep their mouths shut. If they start crying to soften me up, I'm afraid I'll lose my temper.' [...] 'Today,' he said, 'they came to ask me for shoes. I said, "You think I've opened a shop?" I started laughing and I told them to go away. They started to leave. Then I said, "No, hang on, I remember where there are some, but take a van." I showed them on the map where they could find huge piles of shoes.' (p.7)

Without being able to articulate his reasons for doing so, the photographer sets off with O'Leary into the surrounding countryside to photograph ordinary Germans. Like all those who first encountered the German atrocities in WW2 and those who have learned about them thereafter, he is unable to make sense of it. How was it that ordinary people could have been complicit in what was done? Mingarelli's vignettes are an attempt to answer this unanswerable question. They demonstrate the accretion of dehumanisation.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/03/27/the-invisible-land-by-hubert-mingarelli-tran... ( )

I struggled to finish this small book. At the end of the 2nd ww a photographer and a young driver try to make some sense of the aimless bloody struggle by driving around Germany and meeting and photographing ordinary German people....that's it I could find no real deep meaning and found the storytelling somewhat bland. ( )