This match was judged by Elianna Kan. For more info on the World Cup of Literature, read
this, and download the updated bracket.

Costa Rica. Colombia. Ecuador. Greece. These teams have amazed us in this year糖心传媒檚 World Cup for having made it as far as they have. They糖心传媒檙e teams that have played consistently well over the years but have never quite achieved the rock star status of a Brazil, Italy, or France. They have their moments of greatness糖心传媒攕ee Costa Rica糖心传媒檚 incredible 1-0 win against four-time world champion Italy糖心传媒攂ut overall, they have little hope of getting beyond the qualifying rounds due to their relatively lackluster performance and generally unchanged style of play over the years.

Segue to our World Cup of Literature, Round Two:

Representing team Ivory Coast, we have the relentless Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma. Team Ivory Coast糖心传媒檚 opponent for this match comes in the form of The Rest Is Jungle & Other Stories by Mario Benedetti representing team Uruguay. The two teams make a rather odd match for one another: the one, an unapologetically graphic, realist novel told from the perspective of a child soldier in Liberia and the other, a collection of short stories spanning more than fifty years in the prolific writing career of one of Latin America糖心传媒檚 most esteemed writers.

Allah comes out with guns blazing (literally), expletives flying, glossary definitions interjecting irritatingly in passages on nearly every other page. What at first seems like a clever tactic for representing the voice of the novel糖心传媒檚 10-year-old under-educated hero, quickly becomes uninteresting gimmick and it糖心传媒檚 clear early on in this match that Ivory Coast will not be able to keep this up. Sure enough, by the 23糖心传媒� the referee finally pulls a red card on team Ivory Coast糖心传媒攖he crowd groans in exacerbated agreement. This is sheer stereotype reinforcement, pure and simple糖心传媒攃heap tricks and laziness on the part of the author, who neglected to craft a single compelling or nuanced character.

Team Uruguay knows a little something about nuance. In the prologue to his 1979 play, Pedro and the Captain, Benedetti writes:

The work isn’t a confrontation between a monster and a saint, but rather one between two men, two flesh and blood beings who both have their points of vulnerability and resistance. For the most part the distance between the two of them is ideological, and this perhaps holds the key to their other differences—the moral, the spiritual, the sensitivity to human pain, the complex terrain that lies between courage and cowardice, the lesser or greater capacity for sacrifice, the gap between betrayal and loyalty.

Indeed, team Jungle does a much better job navigating this complex terrain of human characterization by juggling various narrative voices and tones but still, many of these stories leave barely a blip on the radar (unfortunately in this case, it seems, in large part due to mediocre translation). In spite of some lovely poetic moments that linger in the imagination as well as the more haunting moods pervading some of these stories, there糖心传媒檚 no Maradona 糖心传媒�86 goal against England. Nothing particularly breathtaking. Which is why we watch this stuff in the first place, right? And so with that, once team Uruguay scored a goal in the 62糖心传媒� with the short story 糖心传媒淭he Iriarte Family,糖心传媒� I shut the TV off and went to sleep.

Uruguay 1 – Ivory Coast 0

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Elianna Kan edits literature in translation for The American Reader and translates from Spanish. She’s also a shameless Argentina fan.

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This match was judged by Laura Radosh. For more info on the World Cup of Literature, read this, and download the bracket.

Artist-activist Maria is on the playing field of her current job when the sudden appearance of the daughter of her ex-best friend, Anna, sends her on a fragmented journey through her life and their friendship, never without political context:

The day PASOK wins the election, I lose my virginity. Now that糖心传媒檚 what I call a “rendezvous with history.”

The trite humor is a bit disconcerting. Is this maybe just an intellectual romance novel after all? But the bad pass is forgotten with the description of the act that follows.

Fifteen-year-olds who want to have sex and at least try to enjoy it. Who smoke and discuss Barthes and go to demonstrations in passages that unabashedly use words like 糖心传媒渇reedom糖心传媒� and 糖心传媒渞evolution.糖心传媒� Amanda Michalopoulou scores a goal for completely believable 1970s teenagers.

Still, the political contextualization often slows down the game. No station in post-dictatorship, pre-crisis Greece is missing. Not to mention World Economic Forum protests in Geneva, oil company protests in Nigeria and, of course, Seattle, where 糖心传媒淜ayo and I vomited side by side at the barricades.糖心传媒� Kayo, the good best friend taken off the bench to replace bad best friend, Anna. This is Maria and Kayo糖心传媒檚 first meeting:

“Kayo you smell like Africa” He shoves me away. “No you don糖心传媒檛 understand! I was born in Nigeria.” I hug him, sink my nose into his neck and breathe in the smell of Gwendolyn, grilled suya, soil after a tropical rain. Kayo糖心传媒檚 eyes tear up糖心传媒攈e must be pretty drunk too. Then he bends down and kisses my hand.

Now I糖心传媒檓 perfectly willing to believe Maria thinks she糖心传媒檚 not racist because she loves Gwendolyn, her childhood nanny. After all, she糖心传媒檚 a weak-willed, naive, romantic idealist, although I糖心传媒檓 not sure this is what I was supposed to take away from that paragraph. But that this reassures a twenty-something left black gay man? Suspension of belief only goes so far糖心传媒攖his is realism after all. Penalty kick for the Ivory Coast.

But when we finally get the replay of the incident that turned Anna into an ex-friend, Michalopoulou scores again. Not so much for the event itself, and certainly not for the cave糖心传媒搒ubconsciousness metaphor that runs throughout the novel, but for the way in which it triggers Maria糖心传媒檚 memory of the childhood trauma that led to her exile from Africa. For at least trying to acknowledge the specter of colonialism that haunts the global left. In a novel, you can kill your annoying best friend. What we will do with all the annoyance in the world no one knows.

But two goals don糖心传媒榯 make up for the fact that for most of Why I Killed My Best Friend, Michalopoulou is to-ing and fro-ing in midfield (糖心传媒榯o and fro糖心传媒�, according to Merriam Webster, is an adjective, noun, or adverb, but I am not obliged to use American English, so suck my dick).

That last convention is lifted from Allah Is Not Obliged. The ten-year-old narrator of Ahmadou Kourouma糖心传媒檚 novel, Birahima, 糖心传媒渢he fearless, blameless street kid, the child soldier,糖心传媒� also uses a lot of dictionaries to tell the story of his time as a child-soldier in Liberia.

I need to be able to explain stuff because I want all sorts of different people to read my bullshit: colonial toubabs, Black Nigger African Natives and anyone that can understand French.

So you never get further than a couple of paragraphs without the intrusion of a definition. These interruptions are often infuriating, there糖心传媒檚 no possibility of escaping into characters or narrative, but suddenly the Ivory Coast is scoring goals left and right. After all, child soldiers are always on drugs, maybe this is just the running commentary of a hash high. Or the dissociation necessary to retain sanity, a paean to the resilience of so many former child soldiers. Either way, it糖心传媒檚 an absolutely brilliant idea that allows for one the most clear-headed explorations of atrocity I糖心传媒檝e ever read. And certainly one of the funniest.

A country is a fucked-up mess when you get warlords dividing it up between them like in Liberia, but when you糖心传媒檝e got political parties and democrats on top of the warlords it糖心传媒檚 a big-time fucked-up mess.

Ivory Coast 4糖心传媒揋reece 2

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Laura Radosh feels like she糖心传媒檚 violated a FIFA rule for not letting an Open Letter book win. She糖心传媒檚 also a translator living in Berlin who would have called a tie if she糖心传媒檇 been judging the brilliant translations.

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