For designers and marketers alike, “A Novel” is a tool that can be used in any number of ways and for any number of conflicting reasons, as wide-ranging and diverse as the genre it describes. People may not have much to say about it, but it does say a lot.
So when a poem wants to respond to a film, how does it resolve the tensions between these two forms? Or, perhaps more accurately: how does it make use of those tensions, and alchemize them into art?
Usually translated as “market grounds,” jangmadang is the word for the unofficial markets that emerged during the Arduous March, which is the regime’s official name for the famine that blighted the country throughout the middle and late 1990s. These were illegal markets, to begin with, that sprang up as a result of the collapse of the public food-distribution system that all North Koreans had previously relied on for their monthly rations. During the later years of Kim Jong-il’s reign, the government began to grudgingly accept their existence and took steps toward regulating them: charging rent for stalls, controlling prices and monitoring what goods were for sale. Under Kim Jong-un, the restrictions against this form of private enterprise have been all but lifted, and jangmadang has transcended the cramped market stalls of its birth to refer to the vast array of legal, illegal and semi-legal markets that exist for all sorts of goods in North Korea. Among recent defectors and expat residents, it is said that now, as long as you have money, you can buy anything you want in North Korea. But since the government still hasn’t figured out a way of publicly reconciling with this nascent form of capitalism, it was considered taboo to discuss the jangmadang with foreigners.
Which is a shame, because the rise of the jangmadang is arguably the most significant milestone in North Korea’s recent history. It lies at the root of all the country’s economic development over the past few years. They might not be permitted to speak about it with outsiders, but North Koreans are no longer shy about flaunting their consumption habits, as anyone who has witnessed the displays on the streets of Pyongyang in recent years can attest. Montblanc watches, Ray-Ban sunglasses and Burberry couture hardly fit the stereotype of a half-starved populace completely cut off from the outside world. And while extreme poverty continues to afflict large swaths of the population, North Korean society no longer conforms to a simplistic picture of haves and have-nots, but is home to an increasingly diverse and complex array of socioeconomic classes. While the presence of a rising upper middle class is most apparent in Pyongyang, a nouveau riche strata has been observed in other parts of the country, such as the port city of Chongjin and in many places along the border with China, where licit and illicit trade continues to flourish.
There are many local legends about how saffron came to Kashmir. One goes back to the 12th century, and says that Sufi saints Khawaja Masood Wali and Sheikh Sharif-u-din Wali presented a local chieftain with a saffron bulb after he cured them of an illness while they were traveling. Another claims that the Persians brought it in 500 B.C., as a means to further trade and market. A third dates the spice back to the Hindu Tantric kings, when it was mixed into hot water to create potions that incited feelings of romantic love.
While the myths arouse discord, there’s one item of consensus: Kashmiri saffron is the sweetest, most precious spice in the world. Its strands are thicker and more fragrant than its counterpart from Iran, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the world’s saffron production. For Kashmiri farmers, crop sells for as much as 250,000 INR or $3,400 USD a kilogram, or $1,550 a pound, in what was once a booming industry. Most of Kashmir’s saffron is grown in Pampore, south of the state’s summer capital, Srinagar. Thirty years ago, it would take Fehmida Mir’s family six to seven months to pick and then package their crop; she recounts memories of winters filled with the spice’s fragrance and palms golden from working with it. As recently as a decade ago, Mir would be able to harvest 200 kilograms of saffron, half of the 400 kilos her parents would get in the 1990s. Three years ago, her crop dropped to 20 kilograms; in 2016, it dropped to 15. Last year, the crop weighed less than 7 kilograms; this year’s produce has been the same. In all of Pampore, farmers have suffered similar fates, unable to account for their production for the last two years, as it was so little.
Tourist offices, travel agencies, and young ladies on the phone had assured me that there was no room on the train as far as Perth; at Adelaide, I was going to have to catch a plane. But Italian travelers don’t argue; they simply remain skeptical. They don’t complain; they investigate. At Sydney Central Station I ask: “Is there room?” Answer: “We’ve just had a cancellation. There’s a place available in Red Kangaroo.” Unaware of the chromatic implications of the marsupials in question, I reply, “I’ll take it.”
I discover that Red Kangaroo means second class. No problem: the Indian Pacific is one of the great railway journeys on the planet. The line was built to persuade the colonies of Western Australia to join the federation. Inaugurated in 1917, it had been constructed in five years using picks, shovels, carts, and camels. There remained the problem of the different gauges: to go from Sydney to Perth, you had to change trains six times. I only have to change my sleeping compartment in Adelaide. That seems doable.
American Spy works on so many levels — it's an expertly written spy thriller as well as a deeply intelligent literary novel that tackles issues of politics, race and gender in a way that's never even close to being heavy-handed or didactic. Above all, it's just so much fun to read — like the best of John le Carré, it's extremely tough to put down. It marks the debut of an immensely talented writer who's refreshingly unafraid to take risks, and has the skills to make those risks pay off.
To call this standout book a corrective would make it sound earnest and dutiful, when in fact it is wry, readable and often astonishing. Immerwahr knows that the material he presents is serious, laden with exploitation and violence, but he also knows how to tell a story, highlighting the often absurd space that opened up between expansionist ambitions and ingenuous self-regard.
“Most voyages end in failure,” Luisa concludes. She adds that “to imagine travel is probably better than actually traveling since no journey can ever satisfy human desire.” The figure of the shipwreck looms large for Aridjis. It becomes a useful lens through which to see this book, which is self-contained, inscrutable, and weirdly captivating, like a salvaged object that wants to return to the sea.