Marshlands

by Matthew Olshan

"A first novel of considerable powerful, original, cunningly constructed, and timely." —Julian Barnes, author of The Sense of an EndingAfter years alone in a cell, an aging prisoner is released without explanation, expelled into a great city now utterly unfamiliar to him. Broken by years of brutality at the hands of the prison guards, he scrounges for scraps, sleeping wild, until a museum curator rescues him from an assault. The museum has just opened its most controversial a perfect replica of the marshes, an expansive wilderness still wracked by conflict. There the man had spent years as a doctor among the hated and feared marshmen, who have been colonized but never conquered. Then Marshlands reveals one of its many it is written in reverse. The novel leaps backward once, twice, returning to the marshes and unraveling time to reveal the doctor's ambiguous relationship to the austerely beautiful land and its people. As the pieces of his past come together, a great crime and its consequences begin to take shape. The true nature of the crime and who committed it will be saved for the breathtaking ending—or, rather, for the beginning. In the tradition of Wilfred Thesiger's The Marsh Arabs and J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Marshlands explores a culture virtually snuffed out under Saddam Hussein, and how we cement our identities by pointing at someone to call "other." Elegant, brief, and searing, Matthew Olshan's Marshlands shivers with the life of a fragile, lost world.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, Contemporary, Novels, Historical, American

177 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 4, 2014

About the author

I tend to think about stories in terms of the energy they release.

Some stories are a long slow burn of pathos; others flash before your eyes in a burst of delirium or delight. Still others seem to detonate inside of you, clearing the way for a new understanding.

A few exceedingly rare stories somehow manage to catalyze all of these reactions. Those are the most mysterious of all.

As a reader, I’m interested in all of these strange forms of combustion. A brilliant kids’ book is just as dazzling to me as a heartbreaking literary novel. I can’t imagine being fascinated by fireworks but somehow ignoring the subtle pleasure of the Northern Lights.

Unfortunately, we live in an era of specialization. The publishing world depends, like any business, on market segmentation and branding. It says: “You are a writer of children’s books;” or “You are a writer of serious books for grown-ups.” This poses a challenge to the writer who wants to experiment with stories in all their infinite diversity.

I’m a curious fellow. I like to learn how to do new things. This has led me to study languages living and dead; fly airplanes; sing Renaissance polyphony; restore antique machines; cook as if I were a citizen of every continent; renovate houses; croak like a Tuvan throat singer; soup-up computers; build a mud oven.

Through it all, there has always been writing. Novels, screenplays, children’s books, op-eds, letters, poems. Writing, like marriage, involves doing the same thing every day, but with fresh eyes and a willing heart.

In other words, it is a discipline: sometimes glorious, often maddening, but always new.

Reviews

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unnamed man is released from an unnamed prison after an unspecified length of time, we slowly learn that the world has changed a great deal since he was imprisoned, that he was some sort of political prisoner in an unnamed third world country, that he was beaten repeatedly and that he has nobody waiting for his release. Through three sections of story that jump progressively further back to the root of what caused this man's imprisonment we come to know this unnamed man, to have affection for him even.

Matthew Olshan's fable-like tale of the impact of empire and genocide is powerful in its telling, an unusual combination of sparse, unsentimental prose and beautiful descriptions of a lost land and people, it's not quite ethno-tourism by proxy but it has a similar effect. The reverse chronological structure works to sustain intrigue much more so than a similar story told in a more traditional manner, with Olshan not exactly drip feeding his reader but slowly revealing details through events rather than dialogue in conjunction with this, it makes for an engrossing and pleasurable read.

I have been informed that the extinct marshlands in question were based on real world events that took place in Iraq but for me the beauty and the power of Olshan's novel is that the place could be anywhere, the genocide any genocide, the people any of us, it could have happened any time in the past and can still happen in the future; empire and colonies have been built and destroyed repeatedly throughout history, it seems to be in our nature as a species.

The subject matter is familiar and Olshan's protagonist shares a great deal with both Pyle and Fowler from Graham Greene's Quiet American for example but Olshan's take on it makes it a very worthy and interestingly different addition to the discussion.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful novel that once again introduces me to something I didn't know. I had never heard about the marshlands of Iraq or to the people of the marshes and their customs.

This is written in matter of fact, unsentimental prose. It offers amazing details in an unsentimental almost detached manner, no matter the horrible things that are being done. It introduces the reader to a young physician named Gus and shows us how he became involved with the people of the marsh, a people he grows to admire to his own detriment. It is told in three parts, moving backwards. How Gus ends up where he does is told in these different segments since the reader first meets Gus as an older man, just released from many years in prison.

I have included a link to pictures of the people who lived in the marshlands. I looked up the history and as the book shows these people have now been displaced, the marshes drained which is also part of this novel. http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=m...

A fantastic story about a way of life now gone and a young idealistic doctor who pays a high price. I loved it.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never come across anything from Matthew Olshan before I made my way to my local library, but saw the interestingly animated cover of ”Marshland” as I was perusing the ‘new books’ shelves.  I must admit that vibrant titles tend to catch my eye and I do happen to judge books by their covers.  It’s unfortunate that this book didn’t quite meet up to my liking of the cover, but of course that’s no one’s fault but mine.

As Olshan tells the story which is “Marshland”, his characters move backwards through time; a tattered and beaten man bereft of who he once was is released from captivity into an amalgam of people and landmarks which at once were familiar, but have changed in the amount of time he’s been gone. 

As the story unfolds, the background of Gus (the main character/tattered being above), his professional occupation/duties and the marshmen are explained over three intervals: present time, 21 years ago & 32 years ago in that very order.  As the marshmen are occupied by a supposedly more civilized society, Olshan captures what history has taught us about power, greed and assimilation and how atrocious and paranoid mankind can be.

For those who have read J.M. Coetzee’s ”Waiting for the Barbarians", you might find some similarities, but not as much depth.  Overall, Olshan failed to keep my complete interest over this small text, but I would not renounce subsequent writings for the future.

[Bram · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant debut that reminded me greatly of Coetzee's Waiting For The Barbarians, albeit more mysterious and brutal. An idealistic young doctor is gradually crushed by the machinery of empire as he is made complicit in conquest and barbarity. Told in three parts, in reverse chronological order, the hopelessness of his plight is craftily revealed, holding a magnet to the reader's moral compass.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Wish I'd had the time to sit down and read it in one or two sittings. I usually don't go crazy over books this short in length as they seem to be too lacking in character development, but Olshan has a way of fleshing out characters that really made it work. Also loved the unsentimental writing style and sparse prose. Despite the style, the setting still seemed quite vivid to me. The broad leaps back in time added a unique aspect but never seemed jarring or confusing. It all came together well.

I hadn't known about the Marshlands of Iraq, and when I requested this book from the "first reads" program I wasn't even sure it would be an interesting topic for me, based solely on that. Boy was I wrong. I've already added a couple of non-fiction about the Marshlands to my reading list. A fictional book that leaves me wanting to know more about the "real thing" is always a good sign.

Thank you, Goodreads, for a complimentary copy of this wonderful book!

[Kadri Pereira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written. I liked it how it moved backwards to reveal the facts of what actually happened. In case anybody wonders, the story takes place at Mesopotamian marshes (Southern Iraq). Read some related history about it, I love books that teach me something new.

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Na een jarenlange gevangenschap komt Gus zonder enige verklaring van zijn bewaarders op vrije voeten. De wereld om hem heen is veranderd en zonder enige cent op zak wordt hij in een grote, vreemde stad gedropt. Gus ontpopt zicht tot een nederige maar inventieve zwerver. Hij is dan ook allesbehalve dom.

Vóór zijn gevangenschap was hij dokter. Dokter van de moerasmensen; een gekoloniseerde bevolkingsgroep die in het moeras gevestigd was. Gus blijkt een bijzondere man te zijn, een uitzondering op de regel. Hij verdiept zich in de cultuur van de moerasmensen en respecteert hen. Dat is heel wat anders dan de soldaten die in het gebied gelegerd zijn.

Vanwege een onduidelijke gebeurtenis leeft Gus in het heden als zwerver op straat en scharrelt hij op inventieve wijze zijn kostje bij elkaar. Hij wordt opgemerkt door een vrouwelijke curator van het museum die hem onder haar hoede neemt. Zij blijkt onlangs een controversiële tentoonstelling te hebben geopend in het museum die een prachtige en realistische weergave laten zien van het leven van de moerasmensen. Een wereld waarin Gus zich thuis voelt en zorgt voor een grote toestroom van herinneringen. Langzamerhand wordt duidelijk wat de reden is van de gevangenschap van Gus.

Wat is Waterland toch een bijzonder boek. Niet alleen om het surrealistische verhaal maar ook door de opbouw. Zo heeft Olshan het verhaal in drie delen verdeeld. Vanuit het perspectief van Gus wordt gewisseld naar het heden en verleden (21 en 11 jaar terug). Op deze manier maken we onder andere kennis met Gus als bezettingsarts en als zwerver die door de curator in huis is genomen. Het geeft meer diepgang aan het verhaal dat wat wazig start.

Lees verder op: http://boekenz.nl/2016/09/waterland-m...

[Gina Wilkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not often that I actually search out an author's personal email address so I can let them know how much I enjoyed their book. Marshlands in the exception! As someone who has experienced life under dictatorship, and during wartime and occupation, I was blown away by the authenticity and insight in this book. It's a haunting look at colonial history, the dynamic between occupiers and the oppressed, and even the father-daughter dynamic. As a writer, I also appreciate the author's economy of language. He packed a lot of impact into a relatively short book, and I thought about it long after I put it down

[Geoff. Lamb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marshlands is an excellent, engrossing, disturbing novel. Told in a spare 164 pages, and in a 'backwards' (beginning in the present and regressing in time), the author plays the story like a virtuoso. If you read nothing save the first 64 pages (the present), your investment would be secure. If I have a quibble, it is this - I loathe the 'backwards' fashion of storytelling. My suggestion (if you also dislike the convention of 'backwards' storytelling) - begin at page 118 (III), then read from page 65 (II), and finally, read the superb, standalone beginning section.

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hoping Olshan will be writing more books for adults, I more appreciated his short novel by having previously read about the Marsh Arabs. Would like to know what factors led to the author's creation of the main character.
The Marsh Arabs

[Josh Sieders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked up this kindle deal on a whim. 3.5 stars. The lack of specificity of time and place made the story universal. Interesting narrative arc, telling the story in 3 phases, beginning from the present, to in between to the beginning.

[Raewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The structure of the story adds to the quality of the writing. We first read about the present, then are transported to the past and then even farther back. A powerful little book.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible, moving, and thought-provoking read. Awesome.

[Annabel Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A haunting, unsettling view of colonisation and war written in taut, beautiful prose.

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some people think librarians read all day, and I don't know any librarian who does, but working in a library does bring you into contact with excellent books few have heard of. But once discovered, you want to read everything else the author wrote. Marshlands is like that. The mood is like the movie Memento because it starts in the present and moves back in time, but there the similarity ends. The protagonist, Gus, is helped upon his abrupt release from prison by a museum curator. She gives him clean clothes and a useful job, for he had been a doctor. She takes him to a dentist since he had lost his teeth in prison and had difficulty eating. The dentist, disgusted, recognizes this despised man. The former prisoner apologizes to the woman for hiding who he was from her. "I know exactly who you are," she said. "It's a shame you don't know me."

Each of the three chapters moves back in time, movie-like. The book is short, only 164 pages, and not a word is wasted. Olshan is able to portray the mysterious world of the unnamed marsh dwellers with its rich culture, hated by their unnamed foreign occupiers, ending each of the three sections with a punch. It might be possible to identify who Olshan is depicting, but why bother? Despots and occupiers always hate self-enclosed communities that have their own language (the better to plot behind their backs), they hate nomads who move around (where are they now, are they gathering weapons), they hate tribes that sequester themselves in forbidding places to avoid those who torment them (terrorists, guerrillas strike at us for no reason). The despot or occupier keeps the mainstream populace behind them by encouraging hatred and disgust of the separate community (they are diseased, they are inbred, they are backward, they have strange rituals, they worship the devil, they eat babies). They create a narrative for these communities that makes them not-human. And the young doctor's denial of that narrative is his downfall.

[Rmslis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poignant novella about a prisoner of war released from incarceration after 20 years.

As other reviewers mentioned, the beginning of the book is actually the end of the story and the physical ending of the book is actually the beginning of the man’s story. The tale begins when the protagonist of the story, Gus, finds himself released from prison after 20 years. Having nothing but the clothes on his back he begins his assimilation back into a society long changed after the war ended of which he was a participant. As one progresses through the book, the author slowly takes us back through time from the events that occurred shortly before Gus’ arrest that led up to his incarceration, all the way to the beginning (of this story) when Gus first becomes involved with the war. At this point, it is the physical ending of the book.

What piqued my interest to read the book was seeing that the story takes place in a foreign country. However, throughout the story the author really skimps with any detail other than what Gus is directly experiencing. This was an effective technique of the author as it kept me turning the pages because I was curious about wanting to know more about what happened to Gus to cause his incarceration. This was my only disappointment with the story, as it didn’t provide me with enough information that I would have liked with regard to location of the story and the war that was being fought. Aside from my unmet expectations from the reading, I thought the story was well written and it held my attention throughout.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr Olshan gives us a view of - without labels to distract - the state of the occupied. In a short book, little is developed very deeply, so we see the surface of many types of conflicts - occupiers/occupied, foreign doctor/the village, father/daughter, and many more. Much is left to the imagination, but because there are no labels (what country are we in? what is the war/occupation about? who are the combatants?) the reader immediately fills in the blanks with current events. In this way Mr Olshan asks us to examine what a government does in the name of its citizens.

I liked the idea of the book, but hoped for more than what I found in the pages. The depiction seemed fairly one-sided, so when filling in the blanks there were few difficult choices to make with respect to occupiers and occupied.

Marshlands challenges us to examine what goes on in the world, but also tells the reader how to react. Perhaps this is what the author intended, perhaps not, but it's what I took away.

[Jamie Barringer (Ravenmount) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book turned out to have a sort of dystopian/post-conflict occupation setting, and I suppose it would be considered fantasy, to some extent, since the place is not actually our Earth, though it is similar. In this story, the American-like people have assisted a tribal marsh-dwelling people to defeat a genocidally violent neighbor. The American-like people stayed after the conflict ended, to bring stability and modern civilization to the marshmen. And, of course, the marshmen are treated as semi-intelligent, nearly human creatures deserving pity at a distance but not deserving respect otherwise.Clearly there are parallels to our world, but the world in this story is its own tragedy. Needless to say, I enjoyed this book and definitely recommend it.

[Barbara Sibbald]

"Noble interventions."
It's an apt description.
Immediately after reading "Marshlands," I had to find out where this book was set. Ms Wikipedia obliged under Mesopotamian Marshes. It's a fascinating story, a fantastic setting.
This under-story brought understanding and more appreciation for Olshan's novel. But, importantly, it also stood alone. Images from it kept floating to my head: torture using barbed wire; a canoe ride though crowded marsh, hunting wild pigs and birds; a man with one eye. And in the midst, a noble doctor, who enters the world, but is torn in his allegiances. At least at first.
Telling in three time installments, going backward, makes the inciting incident the dramatic ending.
Brilliant plotting.

A good read.

[Jessica Mailhot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story spurred my curiosity from the get go. It was an enjoyable puzzle to understand this alternate reality and fit the 3 sections of the timeline together. I respect and appreciate the intentional vagueness - this could have easily been set in the Middle East or Vietnam wars, but the author let it be its own setting (and also like many settings all at once). If you enjoy unique premises, landscapes that are like living characters, and unconventional timelines (and can stomach some of the graphic horrors of war), I highly recommend.

[Elena Ochoa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first third of this book was a really slow start and I found myself having a hard time getting into it. It was written in a very matter of fact prose which might be some people’s cup of tea but I like a little more embellishments. I thought the book also cut to black during a lot of cliff hangers where I would have liked to see what had happened next. But I really empathized with the marsh men and Gus as they were trying to navigate a world with unwanted and unneeded foreign military occupation within indigenous lands.

[Sarena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marshlands was certainly a unique book, but in the end, I think that characteristic both helped and hurt it. The beginning was beyond perplexing, and that confusion wasn't clarified until the latter parts of the flashbacks. The book did piece together beautifully, but the fact that the reader has to wait until more than halfway through the plot to understand what happened made me dock stars.

[Chris]

Violent and unsettling descriptions of torture and war. Unnamed place - loosely(?) based on marshes of southern Iraq, which were drained - that's being occupied. You see the occupation primarily through the eyes of an idealistic, marsh-o-phile doctor named Gus. Reverse chronology, with some new terrible war crime anchoring or opening each of the three parts. Themes are about occupation, good intentions falling short, mistranslations.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found that Olshan's precise, unsentimental language was a refreshing way for this story to be told. The setting was intriguing, the twisting plot captivating. Gus became an endearing main character (and what an interesting decision to reveal his story in reverse.) The conclusion, I guess you could call it, left me wanting for more. I would love to read another Marshlands tale.

[Bryan Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dreamlike novel in three (sometimes too ambiguously, for me at least) related acts, chronicling first the release of a middle-aged prisoner in a foreign land after he serves time for a crime which is not, at first, fully explained and then two lengthy backstories, set around 20 and 10 years prior to the present, respectively, describing his prior involvement in a society in which a subjugated, "primitive" race of people in The Marshes live their lives and are gradually eliminated by those in power in the mainstream society around them.

After reading this, I discovered that it was meant to be allegorical and based on real events that happened in Iraq, but I don't really know that that changed my feelings about the book, which is a quick, moody, intense read.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dang. This got heavy quickly. I enjoyed it!

[Sarah Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent perspective on the damage done by imperialism and ethnocentrism. Short but powerful.

[Roseake · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Yusuf · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Horrors Attend War

Real or imagined enemies aside, it’s fear that does the real killing.
This is a book about fear and the horrible results when people are caught up in it.

[Jonathan Gruber · Rating 2 out of 5]

very sparely written and slowly moving - somewhat engaging at first through the mystery of the main character, but just moves too slowly and I didn't feel invested