a blog by Peter Leonard
Norstedts has put up a page for Jonas Khemiri's new book, including a video interview in Swedish. Here's a quick, informal translation:
I'll start with the title. My new book is called Montecore: A Unique Tiger. I don't know if you've heard of Seigfried & Roy, a German tiger-taming team. For the past 35 years they've had a big, glitzy show in Las Vegas. Two years ago, in October 2003, one of these tigers refused to do its trick. So this tamer, Roy, went up to the tiger and tapped him on the nose with his microphone. The big, gigantic white tiger turned towards Roy and attacked him, threw him off. Roy survived -- true story -- and the tiger who attacked him was named Montecore.
My new book doesn't have much to do with tigers, and it doesn't have much to with Siegfried & Roy either. But it has a lot to do with power. How certain people come to have the power to tell a story, and how certain people can take it upon themselves to tell the life stories of others, without having problemetized their own right to do so.
The book actually begins with a letter. A newly-debuted author gets mail from his father's childhood friend, who introduces himself as Kadir. Kadir has a brilliant idea for the author's next book: "You should tell your father's magical story." For this father has recently become a great sucess as a photographer. He now lives in New York, in a luxurious loft and is friends with Kofi Annan and Sting and Bono. Kadir says that this is what your new book has to be about.
Kadir and the author (who, by chance, is named Jonas Hassen Khemiri) begin to put together and reconstruct the father's life. In the beginning they're in agreement, but soon they get into a state of near-war. Fighting over the number of pages, fighting over the language. What was it that really happened? Who betrayed whom? And who really is that tiger who revolts against his tamer? Is it the son who revolts against his father? Or is the characters in the book who revolt against their own author? And isn't there something strange about the character of this Kadir?