De Leesgroep

  • Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Condé

    N.A. If you have ever lived in a small town, a village or experienced a mindset and murmurs of a small place you will relate to the stories this book tells regardless of how close you are or have ever been to Guadaloupe. Being used to reading long Russian novels, I am more acquainted with the feeling of loving or disliking my characters in a more prolonged way. But in Crossing the Mangrove you go deep into a character’s ways of being in dips, like dipping under a water, checking out all the visible fishes and guessing what might be elsewhere in the sea if you could only swim further. Conde gives you hints of historical context, of the relations between different groups, of power relations – of all the different ways of living in a small village Rivier au Sel leaping into adjacent places from time to time. The proximity is not only geographical. Set amidst the realities of colonialism in both subtle and very obvious ways the stories resurface racism and power relations entangled into the day to day life of protagonists. 

    What I love about collective reading and reflection is that it opens a way of observing and being with a book beyond my own capacity to read closely. I, for instance, didn’t really notice that each character is written with a different style and voice. Or that all the female characters are written in the first person, and male one from a third person perspective. 

    To follow the style of the book after the first round of discussion, we each picked a character, reread their chapter  and played it back in the room. It made us pay attention to specific details and questions. 

    In the first round of the discussion, there was a question of whether there was much about independence in the book. I could spot a passage on it reading the chapter of Leocadie Timothee. 

    “When school went back in October, Déodat Timodent had been transferred to Rivière au Sel from Le Moule for disciplinary reasons.

    Everyone knew him because he had spoken out in La Voix du Peuple against the way history was being taught, recalling that the Gauls were not our ancestors. Now the administration was reprimanding him for much more serious misdemeanors. In a warehouse on the wharf he had got together with four of his closest friends, a shoe-maker, a carpenter, an elementary school teacher and a doctor (this one was a mulatto), and discussed communism. At the time it was considered a dangerous, underground doctrine. Today, everyone’s a Communist or in favor of independence.”

    A friend has read from Lucien Evariste’s chapter something else that contrasts this passage interestingly: 

    “Lucien was glad to be back home as soon as he had finished his MA. More often than not, though, he poignantly bemoaned the torpor of this sterile land that never managed to produce a revolution. If only he’d been born somewhere else! In Chile! In Argentina! Or just a stone’s throw away, in Cuba! Triumph or die for freedom!”

    Once you know the story and the plot of Crossing the Mangrove, once you read the book for the first time it’s actually very precious for picking it up over the time, reading individual chapters of it- pulling threads, following histories and building a picture of a village and its connections to the world.

    A.A. It takes a village to raise a child, as the saying goes. In Crossing the Mangrove, it takes one to understand a death as well. The fictional town of Rivière au Sel unfolds before us like a pop-up book, filled with colorful characters, small-town intrigues, and gossip. Condé draws us into the story with the promise of revealing what caused the mysterious death of Francis Sancher, but as we gather fragments of his life reflected through the locals whose lives he touched, the narrative quickly transforms from a portrait of one man into a panorama of an entire village. As the world undergoes a major war and the consequent transformations and upheavals from mid-century onward, we glimpse only muted shadows of these events in the background of Guadeloupeans’ struggles and aspirations. We don’t emerge from this book knowing Condé’s position on Guadeloupe’s independence or what led to Sancher’s death, but rather with a sharpened eye for recognizing how our deeply interconnected worlds resonate equally with events as small as one man’s death and as large as an empire’s end.

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  • The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

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  • The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard

    G.T.: The book presents overdue concepts, particularly the intriguing idea of the “second body.” I found this perspective interesting as it may help those who struggle to grasp the urgency of ecological issues. However, I felt the narrative structure lacked fluidity, as the connections between events and themes were not always clear.

    The author effectively brings back the exploitation of wildlife to human exploitation links, noting that “the geography of wildlife exploitation maps pretty much directly onto the geography of human exploitation.” This observation is a good reminder on how economic and power structures affect both humans and animals.

    Meanwhile the quote on Valentina Tereshkova’s reflection on Earth’s fragility—”The beauty of the Earth was overwhelming… I realised how small Earth is and how fragile”—reinforces the paradox of a dominated yet fragile world. This duality was particularly striking, illustrating the historical context of exploitation on both humans and nature.

    A recurring tension in the book is the duality of humans as both animals and beings who separate themselves from nature. The author questions: “Is a human an animal?” While we share biological traits with other species, we also distance ourselves through language and behavior. The way we describe slaughter—using terms like “humane” or “inhumane”—reveals our discomfort with acknowledging animal suffering. This highlights our tendency to see ourselves as “editors of nature” rather than participants in it. The exploration of this paradox was a thought-provoking aspect of the book.

    While the themes resonated, I felt frustration with the author’s framing—particularly the idea of a sudden “awakening” to environmental crises that have long been discussed. The notion of the “second body” is compelling, but the delayed realisation of humanity’s impact felt out of step with ongoing discourse. The book argues that humans must reconcile their dual identity as both animals embedded in nature and as agents capable of profound destruction. By acknowledging our “second body” (our biological and ecological ties), we might develop a more ethical relationship with the planet and other species. However, this perspective arrives late in a conversation that demands immediate action.

    A.A.: I used to wonder how the genocides of the 20th century happened at the most basic psychological level, from a first-person perspective: didn’t people see what was happening right in front of their eyes? What made them just sit back and witness the destruction of whole peoples? What does it take to move people?

    It was a different era, one explanation went—people’s basic needs were not met, so they were in no condition to extend care beyond their immediate vicinity. Think about it: if you don’t even know how you’re going to feed your family tomorrow, can you really care about others getting slaughtered somewhere else?

    “Perhaps you would have behaved the same way if you were alive back then,” the voice in the back of my mind ventures to suggest. This voice has an amazing ability to rationalize everything. Give it some time, and it will rationalize and explain away all kinds of atrocities—moral, mental, physical, you name it. But as any healthy adult does, I learned to catch myself falling into its trap, and in my desperate attempt to self-correct, I produce an effort that falls well short of expectations while doing just enough to sustain my belief in my integrity. So it went for a long time.

    As I grew up, my belief in my integrity was tested more and more frequently as the world gradually introduced me to new sets of moral conundrums, from full-scale destruction of nature to continued destruction of peoples. All around me—in every homeless child, polluted river, cleared forest, exploited worker—that belief was challenged to the point of bringing me face-to-face with my old question: what does it take to move me?

    I don’t know the answer to that question, but my suspicion is that the thing may be similar to what Daisy Hildyard had in mind when she coined the term “second body.” She tried to imagine and give a name to that sensitive layer that gets pricked by the world, that elicits a reaction—often faint but perceivable—in all of us as we navigate life on this planet. Does it help to think about that capacity as that of a body stretched over all existence in all directions? Is this kind of framing sufficient to capture our relationship with it?

    Or does it take a whole new secular religion, ethics, or irrationally held set of beliefs to fully embrace this capacity and unleash its potential? After all, my first body is what moves me, and it is not particularly rational: when my toe hurts, it doesn’t try to convince my brain by coming up with a list of reasons why it needs medical attention—it quite literally punches holes in my brain cells and forces my whole body to act to stop the pain. Perhaps the second body, or some other way of framing our ethics, must be something similar in character: something that moves us in the most direct way possible? If so, how do we get there?

  • Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt

    G.T. The banality of Evil and the forgotten lessons from of history
    What unsettles me most about books like these – whether Eichmann in Jerusalem or Fromm’s Escape from freedom – is how easily history’s crucial details are erased from collective memory. We’re taught broad narratives about World War II, but the mechanisms of oppression, the slow erosion of morality, and the complicity of ordinary people are often glossed over. These omissions matter because they blind us to the same patterns repeating today. So many thinkers have dissected the horrors of the past, not as an academic exercise, but as a warning: this must never happen again. Yet when I look at the world now, it’s as if we’ve learned nothing. Why isn’t this history a lighthouse, guiding us away from catastrophe? Why does no one intervene when the same shadows reappear? Or “never again” was only a motto to ease the public opinion’s conscience and it was simply always “business as usual’. I am afraid I know the answer…

    Take Germany’s reparation to Israel – a fact I stumbled upon in my reading. For decades, Germany paid reparations to a state established, in part, through the displacement of Palestinians. The irony is grotesque: Europe having committed genocide against Jewish people then funded the colonisation of another people’s land as “repayment”. How is this justice? It is a transfer of guilt, not accountability. The victims of one tragedy became the tools of another, while the original sin (European antisemitism) was laundered into a new form of violence. My mind rebels against the logic: if reparations are owed, shouldn’t they return to the Jewish communities uprooted from Russia, the Balkans, and across Europe? Shouldn’t those nations – not Palestine – bear the cost of redress?

    The same powers that orchestrated or enabled the Holocaust later supported Israel’s founding, then looked away as Palestinians were dispossessed like many other nations did. The lesson “Never Again” was twisted to “Never Again to Us”. The banality of Evil isn’t just Adolf Eichmann following orders; it’s the world refusing to connect the dots.

    Books like these force me to sit with uncomfortable questions: Who gets to define justice? Why do we remember some atrocities and erase others? And how long can we keep pretending we don’t see the cycle restarting?

    Nations still justify massacres. We claim to ‘learn from history’ but we never do! Eichmann’s defence – ‘I followed orders’ – echoes in every modern atrocity.

    Arendt exposes the lie at Europe’s core: the nation-state as a model forced, invented “purity” onto diverse regions. The Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires (flawed as they were) had Jews, Muslims, Slavs and Armenians living side by side for centuries. Then came borders, passports and stateless – people stripped of rights for not fitting the myth…

    This makes me admire Edgar Morin, who believed that reducing people to a single national identity erased their complexity and turned individuals into anonymous citizens.

    Arendt warns: Evil isn’t radical; it’s bureaucratic!

    Complicity
    The book also exposes how anti-jewish laws existed in Germany and elsewhere as early as 1920, normalising discrimination long before the Nazis. Oppression often begins with legal bureaucracy, not violence. Jewish councils, were facilitating the implementation of Nazi policies, showing how genocide relies on ordinary people performing administrative tasks. The Holocaust involved widespread European collaboration – France, Romania, Serbia, Hungary and others participated willingly. Today’s treatment of refugees, framed through bureaucracy and dehumanising language, echoes past justifications of ‘who is deemed worthy of protection or life’.

    Empathy
    Inability to see the “other”
    Arendt noted Eichmann’s ability to empathise with his victims, a moral blindness still visible today in leaders and ordinary people who ignore the harm their actions cause. Zionist settlement, past and present, reflects the same failure to consider the human cost. Without recognising other’s humanity, their suffering remains invisible. K-Zetnik’s vow to bear his camp name symbolises a warning: humanity forgets atrocities not from ignorance but from deliberate refusal to see. Arend saw Eichmann’s trial as proof that while we remember suffering, we often forget how we create its causes.

    Moral collapse
    Arendt criticised how Eichmann’s trial reduced the Holocaust to one ‘monster’, ignoring the widespread complicity of ordinary people – teachers, lawyers, neighbours. Atrocities were normalised by “good” societies, a moral decay mirrored in modern cases like the recent case in France’s Pelicot scandal revealing 52 men raping an unconscious woman (passed around by her husband), none were monsters – just “normal” men. This is the same moral rot: the quiet acceptance that some bodies are disposable. Romania commodified Jewish lives, Hungary looted victims – yet most perpetrators faced little accountability. The trial of Eichmann became symbolic, punishing one man while excusing the system. Arendt revealed how oppression enlists the oppressed, like Jewish councils unknowingly aiding deportations. The simplified victim-monster narrative hides the uncomfortable truth: genocide relies on widespread, mundane cooperation. “Never again” is a slogan, not a promise.

    Brainwashing isn’t magic
    The fact that most Germans still believed in Hitler after Stalingrad, D-day, even Italy’s defection exposes a terrifying truth: people would rather double down than face their complicity. Fromm warned this in Escape from freedom – fear makes us crave authoritarian lies. And today, watch any election campaign: “Us versus Them” rhetoric divides while the powerful loot. Divide and conquer isn’t a strategy; it’s the older playbook in history.

    The slippery slope to genocide
    The Nazis tested genocide on disabled people first, selling it as “humane euthanasia”. Once society accepted that some lives were unworthy, the Holocaust became inevitable. Today, similar patterns emerge: Congolese children die mining for tech, Yemeni famine is dismissed as collateral, and Palestinian lives are dehumanised, we’re on the same slope. Arendt used the term “administrative massacre” to describe how genocide is carried out through bureaucracy not rage. Victims are first stripped of legal entity (statelessness, asset seizure), while perpetrators are not fanatics but clerks – “desk criminals” like Eichmann. Mass murder becomes a process, not an outburst.

    Justice and hypocrisy
    After WWII, West Germany prosecuted Nazis with minimal consequences, treating their complicity as a minor offence. The notion that they were just “following orders” whitewashed the history of genocide. After liberation, Jewish survivors weren’t allowed to reclaim homes in Europe – instead they were funnelled toward Palestine, seeding a new catastrophe. The world saw ethnic cleansing as a ‘solution’ to ethnic cleansing. This isn’t just hypocrisy; it’s proof that genocide’s real lesson – never dehumanise the “other”- was ignored. Arendt pointed out that the Allies’ use of atomic bombs violated the Hague Convention, yet faced no repercussions. She reveals how international justice mechanisms like the ICC are limited by global power dynamics, where the rule of law often only applies to the powerless.

    Arendt drew a cynical analogy between genocide and piracy, noting that Balkan killers walked free after WWII, now, Netanyahu bombs Gaza while Germany sends rifles. Arendt’s exposes a brutal truth: when laws punish only the powerless, they become performance not justice. The ICC’s record tells the story – it has indicted Congolese warlords but never a Henry Kissinger. The pattern is clear: international justice remains a privilege not a right. The ICC’s indictment of Netanyahu, while unprecedented, underscores a deeper asymmetry: powerful actors continue to operate with impunity, protected by political alliances.

    The few who resisted – light in the darkness
    Though Arendt doesn’t directly connect Dimitrov to the Holocaust, his defiance of Nazi ideology – particularly during the 1933 Reichstag Fire Trial – demonstrates her broader point: while most bureaucrats normalised genocide, dissent was possible, but it requires moral courage. In the Netherlands, Dutch students protested when Jewish professors were fired, proving that collective action could disrupt the machinery of oppression. These exceptions shame the rule. For every Dimitrov, there were thousands who said, “I was just following orders”- like the Hungarian police who looted from Jews on death marches.

    Finally, it feels impossible to read this case independently of today; one also feels it’s our responsibility to understand the present through the traces history has left behind…

    A.A. We read Arendt’s work at a time when opportunistic sidekicks- from JD Vance to Suleyman Soylus of this world – are mushrooming around strongmen worldwide. However, the reputation of this work comes not from exposing the disasters their unrestrained sycophancy, greed or cunning cause; that story has been told more than once. Eichmann’s is the tale of an otherwise unremarkable bureaucrat fixated entirely on his career, unable to view his work through any external moral framework beyond that defined by the particular legal system where he lived. In many ways, this mirrors the scenario the series “Severance” warns against: the compartmentalization of moral agency to absolve the perpetrator of accountability in the wider world. Running throughout Arendt’s exploration of Eichmann’s case is an argument for clear, unequivocal resistance in times when the boundaries of morality and normalcy are radically challenged. Through accounts of how deportations were conducted across different parts of Europe, she argues that in places where governing elites and citizens took a firm stance against the encroaching Nazis, the catastrophic outcomes of the “Final Solution” were averted. In contrast, in places (like the Netherlands) where minor transgressions went unchallenged, resistance gradually eroded, resulting in devastating consequences. This serves as a timely reminder in an era when governments impose countless distinctions, artificial lines in the sand, among groups (e.g., migrants, working class) with similar interests in the name of bureaucratic efficiency that may well devolve into something horrific.

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