Customer Reviews

Point of No Return

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This novel - endorsed by none other than Noam Chomsky - certainly does wonders in political consciousness raising. The first person narrator takes on the mantle of a war correspondent who traverses the world, trying to establish a semblance of the truth, in a world that is dominated by what a great political novelist long before Vltchek - George Orwell - has termed `newspeak', a world manipulated by big brother media corporations, dedicated only to greed and profit, where war is peace, where political dissent is punished by marginalization and alienation in the West, and worse - by death - in countries where the Western powers demand unyielding obedience. Our war correspondent and main protagonist, Karel, covers places of conflict such as Indonesia, Timor, the Palestine and Peru where he has one of his semi-residential bases. He writes for a magazine in New York. There the editor is at the end of his tether for supporting his motley crew of dissident journalists (including an Italian philosopher and womanizer), but as the plot reaches the climax with two of his writers - Karel and the Italian - exclusively embedded in a fictional war situation somewhere in South America, the editor finally gets his money's worth, especially as his reporters nearly get killed in action, fighting for the rebels. Set in the historical realm of post 9-11, the US military later launch a large scale attack on the hapless South American country that has been taken over by a revolutionary government. In this also as yet fictional battle, "two large South American countries" come to the aid of the invaded country. Others join within minutes. Will South and Central America unite against the aggressors from the North? Will this herald the long awaited downfall of the US oligarchs?

The reader is left to ponder these questions of global survival. Along the way the reader also gets involved in Karel's personal life and his love interests. At first he is akin to the sailor who has a woman in every port. Things take a tragic turn when in Lima his best friend's girlfriend becomes his, and she gets killed in a bungled action to blow up a bridge. Karel then meets his match in the shape of a Japanese journalist - married with child - who provides a home, the first he's ever had. Happy together at last on a far-away island in Japan, he receives a call from his old comrade Filipe, now a Minister of Defense, asking his old friend Karel to do the honorable thing and cover the ensuing war against the US - the mother of all wars? Karel cannot refuse history in the making. "I'm coming" he says.

The moral of the story is that we all should be prepared for history in the making, and that we all should make a stand in the hour of need, prepared to sacrifice our personal happiness, prepared to support the defenders of liberty, equality and fraternity. Scary thoughts in practice but ever so uplifting when in the realm of well written political fiction. Here the pen is mightier than the sword - as it always should be!

Note: The reviewer is author of NOAM CHOMSKY (Reaktion Books, 2006)