Noah: A novel;

by Hugo Loetscher

English, German (translation)

140 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Hugo Loetscher was a Swiss writer and essayist.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘No, the people of Mesopotamia had never had it so good.’ So begins this curious parable from Zurich writer Hugo Loetscher (1929–2009), which uses the Biblical story of Noah building his Ark as a metaphor for economic bubbles and social mobility. Not the most obvious idea, it must be conceded.

To a Brit, that opening line cannot fail to recall Harold Macmillan's famous speech of 1957, though the internet tells me that it was borrowed from an earlier Democratic Party slogan in the US. Either way, the reference is clearly deliberate. The import of the comparison, on the other hand, is less clear to me. Something is apparently being said about boom-and-bust cycles, and the relationship between economic growth and the idea of future catastrophe, but – perhaps owing to my economic illiteracy – I found it hard to untangle what Loetscher was trying to get across, despite what should be a very relevant modern context. (The book was written in 1967.)

At times, Loetscher's view of social change seems decidedly conservative – there is an ambivalent portrait of the migrant workers, with their backward culture, that flood into Mesopotamia to fill the manual labour jobs that locals won't do, and he seems wryly critical too of the gender fluidity of younger generations (‘the pickup line for young men these days was, “Do you bathe in the Tigris or Euphrates?”’). He also takes lots of good-humoured swipes at such late-capitalist phenomena as insurance scams, the craze for antiques, fashionable haute cuisine, tourism, and psychiatry (‘given his exaggerated fear of water, Noah must have been a great bedwetter as a child’). The tone is dry and subtle, but it's not a flattering depiction of modernity.

Noah said, ‘I took a good look at society and really had nothing to say but: Let it rain.’

Samuel P. Willcocks's translation is fluent and unobtrusive (despite a couple of minor infelicities) and it makes the text sound perfectly modern. Overall this is another fascinating and very welcome entry on Seagull Books' Swiss List, which is every bit as good as the better-known Swiss Literature Series from Dalkey Archive Press, though ‘better-known’ in this case is a decidedly relative term.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Evan Almighty" (2007) was a Hollywood attempt to rethink Noah's story - but in a comical way.
This book, written 50 years ago, does the same - but with far, far more cleverness and wit.
By putting the accent on the economical aspect of the story, the author created a foundation for a deluge of clever witticism and jokes.
Like George Orwell's "Animal Farm" this story is concise, and from the very beginning the reader can conclude does she (or he) enjoys the author's style of story-telling or not. Orwell finished cleverly his novel with this sentence:
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Loetscher's "Noah" has an equally smart ending, which I will not quote here. But this very sentence is worthy of reading the whole book.

[Christine Nyarangi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because the cover looked interesting but really glad that I picked it up. The book is a satire on affluent society. Published in 1967, Hugo foresaw a lot of the themes that the affluent societies of today deal with, for instance, the wealth gap, capitalism, immigration/racial prejudice, consumerism, lifestyle diseases and even global warming to name a few. He pinpoints the problems, contradictions and absurdities that beset all prosperous modern societies.

I read the book in a couple of days. It was really engaging, well written and funny in some parts. I am not sure how to feel about the protagonist Noah. He is the visionary unable to communicate his vision. At odds with the different facets of society. The society can't agree on whether he is a mad man or a genius.

The novel ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger and is left to the reader to decide what the ending of the story is.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noah has a fascinating premise, and the tale begins with witty observations and characters, but unfortunately, this is not maintained throughout the work, and it begins to stumble fairly quickly. There are fascinating reflections and ideas along the way, and they made reading Noah to the end somewhat worthwhile.