The Silence [Paperback]

Jens Bjorneboe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0802313337 | ISBN-13: 978-0802313331

As with the first two books of this trilogy, The Silence also rejects the traditional modes of fiction to posit instead an essay-like novel of ideas, philosophy, and argumentation. Here the inquiring narrator explores not just European history, as he did in the first two novels, but the crimes committed by Europeans against the rest of humanity in the name of expansion and conquest. Set in northern Africa, the narrator is looking at Europe from the outside. With his friend Ali, an African revolutionary intellectual, he discusses in epic fashion the history of colonialism. He engages in imaginary conversations with Columbus, Robespierre, God, and Satan. He becomes totally immersed in what he perceives as the world's wickedness. Despite its presentation of horrors and man's inhumanity to man, and its grim portrayal of the narrator's long plunge into the tunnel of depression, The Silence does not depress. It praises man's immeasurable capacity for good. ""A riveting work of experimental fiction."" Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Part of "The History of Bestiality" trilogy (following Moment of Freedom and Powderhouse), this is a riveting work of experimental fiction that the Norwegian-born Bjmrneboe (1920-76) completed in 1973. Over 25 years later, M rer's flowing and eloquent translation proves that time has only sharpened its message. There is no straightforward plot. Instead, in an essay-like format reminiscent of work by Sartre and Foucault, the narrator and his friend Ali discuss crimes against humanity, such as Cortez's destruction of the Aztec empire and the genocide perpetrated against the Jews. The two friends reside in an unnamed African country beset with startling imagery that neither the narrator nor the reader can easily forget. At one point, the narrator finds a cat that has been run over lying by the road, its belly gaping and its organs exposed. An animal ambulance is called to take away the still-breathing feline and end its suffering. After ruminating about the cat's death, the narrator wonders if it symbolizes the whole history of bestiality, stating, "I simply want a rebellion against the whole world order. Something is wrong at the very bottom. There lies the root of evil." Bjmrneboe's work will continue to be studied in the literary world. Recommended for all academic libraries.DLisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Norwegian

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Dufour Editions (August 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802313337
• ISBN-13: 978-0802313331
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,365,840 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Didactic, But Brilliant, April 18, 2003

By 

Gary Kern (NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Silence (Paperback)

THE SILENCE is the last of Bjorneboe's trilogy of novels called
"The History of Bestiality" and departs markedly from the
preceding two. The first, MOMENT OF FREEDOM (1966), focuses on
"Germania" as the outstanding source of mankind's brutality: the
two world wars, the concentration camps, the racism. Bolshevism
figures in it as just another face of fascism. The second novel,
POWDERHOUSE (1969), delves into more remote history as it offers
examples of the hero's research into the Inquisition, exposing
the pious instinct as an instrument of control and the crowd
mentality as a blood lust. In THE SILENCE (1973) the autobio-
graphical hero finds himself in northern Africa, conversing with
a character named Ali, who has much in common with Frantz Fanon.
From this remote station his eyes peer at Europe, the
colonializer and source of misery for the Third World. Germania
no longer stands out. As Ali instructs him, the perspective
inside Europe is wrong, for it holds up Hitler as a moral
monster, a boogeyman, an exception to the rule; whereas, seen
through the eyes of the colonialized, he is the rule--the
colonial powers were equally ruthless, killed more than the
Nazis and lasted longer than the Third Reich. Accordingly, the
author of The History of Bestiality now catalogs the crimes of
the first conquering Europeans, the Conquistadores: Cortez over
the Aztecs in Mexico and Pisarro over the Incas in Peru.
Incredible scenes of carnage roll across the pages with the same
remorseless attention to detail and biting sarcasm as before,
but with even greater urgency and rage than in the preceding
novels. However, the account has become one-sided: the
sacrifices of children by the pre-Columbian Indians and their
pleasure in wearing human pelts replete with face and scalp
until they rotted and fell away are minimized and excused by the
rapacious gold-lust of the detestable foreigners.

Thus Bjorneboe arrives at a position anticipating the leftist
platforms in America and Europe that dominated the last three
decades of the twentieth century: Political Correctness and
selective Multiculturalism. All history is reinterpreted to the
detriment of the First World and to the credit of the Third. All
filth and evil come from the former; all goodness and hope come
from the latter; and the speaker, who happens to belong to the
former, is absolved of his sins by promoting the latter. It is
a sham doctrine the same as Leninism, from which it derives--the
vanguard speaking for the proletariat. Yet unlike the high
priests of PC, Bjorneboe is not interested in changing
university curricula, dominating the scholarly press or
dictating hiring practices, meanwhile winning a cushy spot for
himself while stabbing non-conformist scholars in the back, but
rather he retains the old fire of the sixties and finally, at
long last, puts his faith in revolution. The subject peoples of
the world, he asserts, the insulted and the injured, the
wretched and the ragged, the downtrodden and the disadvantaged,
will one day rise up to claim their freedom, their rightful
portion of the Earth's bounty and their sunny place in history.
The present moment is but the still--Stillheten, The Silence--
before the storm.

Given this ideology, the didactic tone and the absence of form
(the novel is mostly a series of conversations) THE SILENCE
should not work. And yet it is brilliant and highly readable,
thanks in part to Murer's excellent translation and in part to
the author's sheer inventiveness. The hero meets a penitent
Christopher Columbus in the street, converses with Robespierre
and debates with God, who looks like a shabby street vendor,
only "without a cart." These scenes are absolutely brilliant,
and the trilogy itself, despite its flaws, voices a passion that
is exceptional in world literature and a spiritual peak for
mankind.

Bjorneboe did not find a solution to the problem of evil. How
could he? But after reading him, one cannot fail to be a lot
more distrustful of authority, a lot more skeptical of do-
gooders and a lot more critical of everything. Which is good.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The crecendo and the silence, June 30, 2001

By 

"marimor" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Silence (Paperback)

Hope and destruction are intertwined, evil is contemplated, yet not stated, historical facts are the basis of philosophical uncertanty and diffuse political firmness. This low-pitched novel has the strength of coping with brutality with both irony and fearful seriousness. Time is not a straight line, but a melting pot of friendship, arrogance, torture and thought. The crecendo of time and history leaves room for a profound silence, fluently and mastefully communicated by one of the great authors of our time.