May 7, 2015
The New York Post named Burning Down George Orwell’s House one of its “must-read” books. That can be seen here.
“A satire of a satire? Ervin’s debut novel introduces us to Ray Welter, fictional Chicago ad man in existential crisis, who drops out to the Scottish isle of Jura — to rent the cottage where the father of modern satire wrote most of ‘1984.’ His plans involve a little bit of moping and a lot of the local single malt. Big Brother might not be watching him, but the island’s eccentric locals sure are and also, possibly, a werewolf. High comedy ensues as Welter tries to find himself, Orwell and the savage beast.”
Kyle Minor was kind enough to interview me for Tin House. Here’s an excerpt:
“George Orwell has become the patron saint of paranoia, which is understandable given the utter prescience and genius of Nineteen Eighty-Four. That there exists a reality TV show called Big Brother about people being watched around the clock is both grotesque and perfect. I can’t open the newspaper—and I still get one delivered every day—without reading at least one superficial reference to thoughtcrimes or memory holes or Newspeak. What’s missing from the Orwell-this and Orwell-that commentary is the fact the he wrote things other than Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term ‘Orwellian’ refers to one aspect of one novel, albeit a profoundly great and important one.”
“In Burning Down George Orwell’s House, Ervin has achieved something uniquely refreshing: a book that shows the taste and restraint to pay knowing, affectionate and humorous tribute to George Orwell without trying to prove him right—or to create some redundant simulacrum of his work. That’s no knock on other writers and pundits perceptive enough to identify unsettling echoes of Nineteen Eighty-Four in our contemporary society. But if Burning Down George Orwell’s House demonstrates one thing, it’s that some Orwellians are more equal (to the task) than others.”
The full review is here.
February 19, 2015
Burning Down George Orwell’s House
Book Release Party
Reading + signing + performance by the Dead Milkmen
Sunday May 3, 2015
3-5 p.m.
Free Library of Philadelphia
1901 Vine St.
Philadelphia PA 19103
The charity Books Through Bars will be on hand to collect donations. There’s a list of the things they need here and I would be extremely grateful if you would consider bringing some books for an excellent cause.
Joseph Fox Bookshop will be selling copies, but you can also pre-order from your local independent bookseller here.
“Burning Down George Orwell’s House is really most enjoyable, a witty, original turn on the life and memory of the Sage of Jura, taking place on the island where he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eric Blair serves as the McGuffin in this story, which is one part black comedy and one part a meditation on modern life. It is well-written and truly original.” —Robert Stone
Burning Down George Orwell’s House: A Novel
By Andrew Ervin
Soho Press
ISBN: 978-161954949
Publication date: May 5, 2015.
January 25, 2015
Miami Herald
1/11/15
In January 2010, a massive earthquake hit Haiti about16 miles west of Port-au-Prince, and the immediate carnage killed thousands of people and leveled buildings for miles. In the days that followed, dozens of aftershocks claimed more lives. Accurate accounts of the death toll remain hard to come by, but estimates range from 100,000 to more than 300,000. Even now, the scale of the tragedy is difficult to contemplate, much less to comprehend.
First-time novelist Dimitry Elias Léger seems uniquely qualified to sift through the real and psychological rubble. He was born in Port-au-Prince and studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. His writing career has led him to jobs at the Miami Herald and Fortune magazine. He has also served as an adviser to the United Nations during the disaster recovery operations, so he has some unique and valuable insights.
God Loves Haiti is set before, during and after the tragedy. The story moves back and forth in time, speaking to the horror of the situation and to the characters’ confusion. For them, nothing is stable any longer, not even the earth beneath their feet. Time itself has become unreliable.
The story itself is fairly conventional, though it boasts some lovely flights of surrealist fancy. The moral center of the novel resides with Alain Destiné, a suave and educated businessman. He has been having an affair with Natasha Roberts, an artist who has decided to leave Haiti and move to France with her husband, the President of Haiti. They are about to board their flight out of the country when the unthinkable happens.
“Natasha was about to blaspheme. She resisted the impulse. Barely. She sensed, on a primitive level, the scale of the rupture in history that had taken place. It frightened her. Her arms and legs and feet were caked with dust, so were her lips, face, and false eyelashes. With no warning, something had transformed her into a Caribbean version of a lava-caked citizen of Pompeii. And she was not alone. The moans of the wounded men and women both inside and outside the airport, which had been faint and distant, grew closer and louder. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! they said.”
By switching between several narrators, Léger provides a Rashomon-like range of vision about the event. On her way to the airport, Natasha had taken the precaution of locking Alain in a closet and throwing away the key.
“It was an earthquake! Had to be,” Alain realizes. The event gives him the opportunity to reflect — albeit profanely — on Haitian culture: “But there’s no history of earthquakes in Haiti. None whatsoever. His parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never mentioned it. And picking apart the nation’s colorful, sorrowful, and thrilling history is all Haitians do. It’s a sport, the … national pastime. History is all we have to take pride in, since our greatest achievement occurred in 1804, and we hadn’t contributed … to humanity in the intervening two centuries.”
Alain sounds especially negative about Haitian history, but he’s the one character determined to stay in the country and make things better. But with the president and his wife now overseeing an international recovery effort, the love triangle Léger has constructed begins to bend and twist.
The episode that best distinguishes God Loves Haiti from your run-of-the-mill disaster story, however, comes fairly early in a chapter titled “God Is On Line One.” The President, prone on the tarmac, has a vision in which all of Haiti’s previous leaders line up to speak to St. Peter and plead for eternal salvation. First in line in Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who after participating in the Haitian Revolution named himself Emperor JacquesI.
“To a man, they told Saint Peter to send them to hell. They could have been better men, they said. Then, one step ahead of the President came the turn of the so-called devil himself, President Dr. Francois Duvalier.” It’s a fascinating and powerful scene, one that could easily be counted among the most memorable passages written about that nation.
In God Loves Haiti, history, religion, politics and love — of each other and of our own sorry selves — come crashing together in remarkable and memorable ways. Léger’s rich knowledge of his homeland informs the lives of otherwise unremarkable people like us while they experience the sort of hardships we spend our entire lives praying to avoid. It’s a heartbreaking and lovely novel about what it means to survive the cataclysmic and about what’s lost — and perhaps even what’s gained — in the process.
