This match was judged by Hal Hlavinka, bookseller and events coordinator at Community Bookstore in Park Slope.<\/em><\/p>\n For more information on the Women’s World Cup of Literature, click here<\/a> or here.<\/a> Also, be sure to follow our Twitter account<\/a> and like our Facebook page.<\/a> And check back here daily!<\/i><\/p>\n I\u2019ll be up front and say that this match is a bit one-sided, and was something of a surprise for this judge: Veronique Tadjo\u2019s agile book Queen Pokou<\/em> (C\u00f4te d’Ivoire) managed to handily rout Linn Ullmann\u2019s brooding novel The Cold Song<\/em> (Norway). So what happened to the Norwegians? <\/p>\n The Cold Song<\/em> stumbles out vicious and sloppy from the start. Somewhere between thriller and family drama, but with the conviction of neither, Ullmann\u2019s novel is humorlessly peopled by people one would rather not spend time with. There\u2019s Siri, the mother and shrew, overworked and undersexed, spread too thin as narrative glue but the narrative\u2019s glue nonetheless. There\u2019s Jon, the father and blocked novelist (there\u2019s a specter haunting Norwegian literature), who simply cannot seem to write a word or stop constantly cheating on his wife. Then there\u2019s Jenny, the drunken grandmother; and Alma, the disgruntled teen; and her sister Liv, who lives a life in fifty words or less. Oh, and of course, don\u2019t forget Milla, the au pair whose brutal rape and murder at the hands of the sociopath K.B. occasions this whole ordeal. More on Milla in a bit. <\/p>\n As a thriller, The Cold Song<\/em> relies on the smallest suspicion that a family member may have snuffed out the babysitter. Did Siri uncover an affair? Is Jon covering one up? Did Jenny get soused and commit a hit-and-run? When, halfway through, we learn that\u2019s not the case, and that an Evil Villain is at the heart of Milla\u2019s disappearance, everything falls back on the shoulders of the family drama. The floodgates open, and these banal voices yell and fuck and drink, revisiting their own pasts\u2019 traumas and indiscretions without ever really coming into emotional contact. Great novels are built on less, but Ullmann never takes these relationships into dangerous waters\u2014nothing is real or unreal, challenging or exciting or terrifying enough. All seems static and half-sketched and grey. What some have called nuanced, I\u2019m calling flat. <\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the rape and murder at the center of it all. Given the Scandinavian crime genre\u2019s fascination with the brutalization of women\u2019s bodies, one might read Ullmann\u2019s take as a kind of critique, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s wrong; yet it\u2019s tired, tiring, to trudge through one more rape-as-narrative-engine novel, hell bent on having us act as witness while, at the same time, flattening the act\u2019s social and political and cultural machinations. Furthermore, Milla spends much of the book missing, her rape and murder disclosed only to the reader, leaving the cast to dwell in their petty, simple miseries. One wonders if any of it was really necessary, the extremity wedged inside such a timid story, and, at the conclusion, Ullmann sacrifices complexity for a simple Bad Things Happen tact. <\/p>\n Queen Pokou<\/em> plays a different, smarter game altogether. Of course the general caveat: it\u2019s hard to compare the two books, considering their drastically different approaches to narrative. But follow Tadjo\u2019s epic-in-miniature close enough, and it\u2019s clear, at least to this judge, who the winner is. <\/p>\n Queen Pokou<\/em> adapts a sweeping, legendary tone to recast the story of Queen Pokou\u2019s sacrifice of her child, a foundation myth for the Baoule, the largest tribe in modern C\u00f4te d’Ivoire. In the story, Pokou escapes assassination from the invading Ashanti Confederacy and flees slavery with her people, making the long journey west to the Komoe River. At the river\u2019s edge, with no way to cross and troops closing in, a priest proclaims that a sacrifice is required for the tribe\u2019s survival. Pokou throws her infant into the dangerous waters, screaming, “Ba-ou-li: the child is dead!,” after which a giant tree crashes down to form a bridge. The tribe passes into safety, settling to farm in exile and taking the name Baoule in honor of the queen\u2019s sacrifice. This is the basis for the legend, and the first story that appears in Tadjo\u2019s narrative. <\/p>\n Here, it\u2019s important to note Queen Pokou<\/em>\u2019s subtitle: Concerto for a Sacrifice.<\/em> The lead voice in the orchestra, Pokou\u2019s story is not a static note, held indefinitely unto silence, but has melody, rhythm, and counterpoint. For Tadjo, the foundation myth is just that: a foundation upon which to construct something new. In the novel\u2019s second part, “The Time of Questioning,” the narrative begins teasing apart the emotional and ethical dimensions of such a sacrifice; suddenly we\u2019re in the realm of speculation. One variation of the story sees Pokou sparing her infant only to throw herself to the waters to become an ocean goddess; in another, the queen refuses a sacrifice altogether, and the tribe is brutally captured and shipped across the Atlantic Passage into new world slavery; yet another variation reframes the sacrifice as a rejection of motherhood and a bid for power. <\/p>\n By turns fantastical and terrifying and chilling, each new variation looks at the foundation myth from a new vantage point, testing the Queen\u2019s decisions and motives by shifting the variables. Tadjo\u2019s language finds rhythms and repetitions that build in force, turning her mythic tone into something more terrestrial. Indeed, the real power of Queen Pokou is in the way that this tonal shift occurs, in how, variation after variation, Tadjo invokes the traumas of the African eighteenth century\u2014slavery, colonization, and civil war\u2014to deconstruct and humanize the legend. I\u2019m not sure how many of my fellow judges in this tournament will be so affected by Veronique Tadjo\u2019s Queen Pokou<\/em>, but I, for one, wish the C\u00f4te d’Ivoire luck. <\/p>\n C\u00f4te d’Ivoire: 3 Next up, C\u00f4te d’Ivoire’s Queen Pokou<\/em> will face off against either The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine<\/em> by Alina Bronsky (Germany) or The Happiness of Kati<\/em> by Ngarmpun (Jane) Vejjajiva (Thailand) on Tuesday, June 23rd. <\/p>\n Tomorrow’s match will be judged by Florian Duijsens and is a big one, featuring China’s The Last Lover<\/em> by Can Xue (recent winner of the Best Translated Book Award) against New Zealand’s much praised The Luminaries<\/em> by Eleanor Catton. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This match was judged by Hal Hlavinka, bookseller and events coordinator at Community Bookstore in Park Slope. For more information on the Women’s World Cup of Literature, click here or here. Also, be sure to follow our Twitter account and like our Facebook page. And check back here daily! 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\nNorway: 0<\/p>\n