Sumantra Bose is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the LSE with a specialty in ethnic and national conflicts. Here he discusses the book that inspired his early interest in politics and also about the contemporary works of fiction and non-fiction he most admires for capturing humanity amidst war

Bose, Sumantra

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by Danielle Moran August 12, 2012Sumantra Bose is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the LSE with a specialty in ethnic andnational conflicts. Here he discusses the book that inspired his early interest in politics and also about thecontemporary works of fiction and non-fiction he most admires for capturing humanity amidst war.This art icle f irst appeared on the LSE’s Review of Books blog(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/).It was Autumn 1988 and I had just arrived in a pretty university town in New England, 90 miles west ofBoston. I had come f rom my home city Calcutta (Kolkata) in India, where f or twelve years I attended a Jesuitschool. I enrolled as a f reshman at Amherst College. Thousand-page reading assignments were f requent,and students were expected to participate actively in seminars. I f elt like a novice swimmer thrown of f  thedeep end of  a pool. But soon the excitement of  learning – not just learning new things but more important,a new way of  learning – gripped me totally.I had thought of  majoring in economics. But the most interesting course I took that f irst semester –Introduction to Polit ical Science (Poli Sci 11) – proved to be the beginning of  a dif f erent path, which alsolater led me to reject as too dry and boring other post-graduation possibilit ies such as law school orinvestment banking.My Poli Sci 11 seminar teacher was an eminent ‘Sovietologist,’ William Taubman. Bill was a f ine teacher andscholar (his books include a monumental biography of  Nikita Khrushchev which won a Pulitzer Prize in2004). A f ew weeks into the semester we read Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wretched-Earth-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141186542), f irst published inFrench in 1961 just bef ore Fanon’s death f rom cancer aged thirty-six. I knew about this book – which f if tyyears later remains the classic work on colonialism and anti-colonialism – but had not read it caref ully untilthen. Combining raw power and deep ref lection, a polit ical tract derived f rom Fanon’s personal experiencesas a black cit izen of  France and his prof essional lif e as a psychiatrist in Algeria during its war of  liberation,the book touched a chord with both my national and personal background (my f ather ’s f amily, including myf ather, were prominent in India’s struggle f or f reedom).I wrote an excited essay on the book. Bill gave it a B+. He told me that he understood my perspectiveentirely and f ound the essay well-written, but f elt that I should crit ically interrogate even those writers –and perhaps especially those – I f ound powerf ul and persuasive. He also cited his own view, derived f romhis career as a scholar of  the Soviet Union (Russia in particular) that ideologised and rousing movementsf or collective emancipation of ten lead to tyrannical outcomes. It was sound advice.In recent years I have been impressed by two books that represent authentic and compelling accounts ofplaces and peoples I have worked on: Kashmir and the f ormer Yugoslavia. One is Basharat Peer ’s CurfewedNight: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Curfewed-Night-Frontline-Memoir-Kashmir/dp/0007350708). Peer was born in January 1977 in a village in the Kashmir Valley–known as jannat (paradise) f or its beauty – where he spent his childhood and early adolescence. The idyllcollapsed in January 1990 as insurgency and counter- insurgency engulf ed the Valley (that ‘war ’ has sincekilled about 50,000 people). Peer ’s book consists in part of  autobiographical reminiscence of  Kashmir in the1980s and early 1990s. He stayed in his village through 1992, af ter which he was sent to complete school innorthern India, partly because his f amily f eared he would join the insurgency. Af ter a decade away, Peerreturned to the Valley as an adult to record the consequences of  protracted armed conf lict f or hishomeland and its people. This narrative–centered on the survivors of  massacre, rape and torture and toldin a (deceptively) measured style–comprises the second part of  his book.The other book is Made in Yugoslavia: A Novel  (http://www.amazon.com/Made-Yugoslavia-Tpb-Vladimir-Jokanovich/dp/0330480596), written by Vladimir Jokanovic and published by Picador in 2000, which I boughtyears ago in a Sarajevo bookshop. I read it very recently, though, as a distraction (I thought) f rom intensivewrit ing I have been doing of  late on a book of  my own. It did provide distraction, of  a riveting kind.Jokanovic was born in 1971 in Osijek, a sizable town in eastern Croatia where he lived until 1991. The novelis set in Osijek and its region through the summer and autumn of  1991, when civil war engulf ed that regionand several other parts of  Croatia. It tells the story of  a society upended and destroyed by civil war f romthe perspective of  young people in their twenties, particularly the main character, a happy-go- lucky youngman called Luka. It brought back memories of  t ime I spent in the war zones of  Croatia between 1993 and1995. Full of  black humor, Made in Yugoslavia recounts the brutal tragedy of  f riends, neighbors and loverswho were driven by the f orce of  events to turn on each other. The ending–when Luka, by now a paramilitaryf ighter, discovers the body of  his f ormer girlf riend, one of  several of  the ‘enemy’ he and his unit have killedin an intense battle–is especially ef f ective.I could relate to Curfewed Night and Made in Yugoslavia because I have intimate knowledge of  thesesocieties. But I have been as touched by a novel set in a country where I have never set f oot: Libya. This isthe young (born 1970) Libyan writer Hisham Matar ’s In the Country of Men (http://www.amazon.com/Country-Men-Hisham-Matar/dp/0385340435/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1344162829&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=In+the+Country+of+Men). It is set in Tripoli in 1979, shortly af ter Muammar Gaddaf iconsolidated his absolute power, and is told f rom the perspective of  Suleiman, a boy aged nine (Matarspent most of  his childhood in Tripoli, his early adolescence in Cairo, and has lived in London since then). Ittells a grim story of  people condemned to live under institutionalized terror. Like Made in Yugoslavia andCurfewed Night, In the Country of Men is extraordinarily evocative of  its setting and exceptionally skilled inbringing out the beauty and complexity of  human relationships. The book revolves around the relationshipbetween Suleiman and his troubled but loving mother, who had him, her only child, when she was f if teen.Matar has produced another brilliant novel: Anatomy of a Disappearance (http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Disappearance-Novel-Hisham-Matar/dp/0385340443/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1344162856&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Anatomy+of+a+Disappearance).The theme is surely derived f rom his own lif e-story–Matar ’s f ather, a f ormer Libyan diplomat, waskidnapped while in exile in Cairo in 1990, taken to Libya, and has never been seen again. There is evidencethat he was incarcerated in Tripoli’s inf amous Abu Salim prison and that he survived the mass killing ofsome 1300 prisoners there by Gaddaf i’s regime in 1996. The publication of  Anatomy of a Disappearancecoincided with the beginning of  the Libyan uprising of  2011.What might be common to Peer, Jokanovic and Matar? Well, they all write on intensely polit ical themes, andpolit ics is my passion. They are all uncompromising in the philosophy and the style of  their writ ing (asFrantz Fanon was). There may be a generational af f inity–Matar and Jokanovic are of  my generation, andPeer is younger but not by much.But ult imately, what inspires me about these writers is that they tell stories of  humanity amid unspeakablebrutality — the resilience of  a human spirit tortured and injured but still alive. That is what makes thesebooks about particular places universal in interest and appeal. I can only hope that my own work as apolit ical scientist is not too dull in comparison. Related posts:1. Paper books in a digital era: How conservative publishers and authors almost killed of f  books inuniversity social science (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2012/05/02/paper-books- in-a-digital-era/)2. 5 Minutes with Julian Huppert MP: “We need more people with a scientif ic background in Parliament”.(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2012/04/27/5-minutes- julian-huppert/)3. Australia’s research strength lays in science, according to f irst national assesment(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2011/02/15/australias-research-strength- lays- in-science-according-to-national-assesment/)

The books that inspired Sumantra Bose: “Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth touched a chord with both my national and personal background”

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