Bosun

by New Juche

“I can feel the city right there, smell its breath, and have a sense of the queer indignity to which I hold it subject, and in turn, the nascent threat to me that it represents. And the odorous vintage of my room and its qualities, which are marvelous and specific to this particular room, demonstrate to me that, like my compatriots when they burgled this country, I came here directly from childhood.”

In this stunning new book, New Juche turns his formidable attention toward the architecture and spatial sensibilities of the city of Rangoon, which evoke for him the dereliction of Thatcher’s Britain and the dreamy trauma and abuse of his early institutional life. Sensual, redolent and deeply personal, “Bosun” is a perversely lyrical rumination that also sheds some strange light on the author’s previous work.

Genres: Fiction

136 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2018

About the author

New Juche is the nom de guerre of a writer and photographer who lives and works in Southeast Asia. He is also the author of Wasteland, The Mollusc and Gymnasium.

Reviews

[od1_40reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first work by New Juche, and it has definitely made an impression.

New Juche is a writer and photographer, originally from Scotland and now living, I understand, in South East Asia. ‘Bosun’ is roughly 2/3s prose and 1/3 photos.

I didn’t really know what to expect in all honesty, other than I’d read some excellent reviews. And it turns out that New Juche is clearly an exceptionally talented writer.

The book is essentially an examination of the colonial effects on the city of Yangon (purposely referred to throughout the book by it’s colonial name Rangoon) through it’s architecture; and the author’s attempt to understand his role in the city as a British national. As mentioned above, he does this through both text and photography.

New Juche’s prose is impressive, it has to said. It also makes for, at times, pretty uncomfortable reading. As the book progresses, and he reveals more about himself, I have to say I’m not sure I would actually like to meet him in person!

Impressive book. Literature fans should seek this one out!

[Seth Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Built by dead Scotsmen, this graveyard of a colony is now the loneliest place for a living one."

My introduction to New Juche’s work was an anaesthetised experience. There’s a wholly unique style of prose on display here, the quality of which could be described as a midway point in the (here comes that awful word) liminal space between decayed realism and magical realism. The result is a hallucinogenic examination of colonial complicity. NJ accomplishes this in an oblique way, through an examination of architecture in the city of Rangoon. As both a photographer and a writer, NJ has a deft command of sensory language, which he uses to carefully construct an image of a city that’s defined by its infrastructural deterioration. Who doesn’t love a healthy dose of irony?

What we’re given, as readers, is a novel that seeks out to (and in my mind, expertly accomplishes) two things: 1) Depict the overstimulating chaos of living as an outsider in a city that seems, at all times, only moments away from collapsing in on itself, and 2) To understand the role that this outsider plays as a citizen of the nation that pushed the city to it’s brink in the first place. That’s why he very intentionally uses it’s outdated, colonial name - Rangoon - as opposed to it’s contemporary one, Yangon. Every step he takes through the humid, smokey alleys of this urban sprawl is punctuated by the presence of British imperial control in it’s architecture. If the city can’t escape the European grasp, then I suppose neither can he...

One of the best books I’ve read all year. A quick but propulsive read. HIGHLY recommended.

“I can feel the city right there, smell its breath, and have a sense of the queer indignity to which I hold it subject, and in turn, the nascent threat to me that it represents. And the odorous vintage of my room and its qualities, which are marvelous and specific to this particular room, demonstrate to me that, like my compatriots when they burgled this country, I came here directly from childhood.”

[Ben Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

New Juche is the expat Scot now resident in Southeast Asia, and Bosun is his ecstatic hymn to the city of Rangoon. Full of writing whose beauty catches my breath.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a strange and grim tale of expatriates and corporal punishment being expressed across two time lines. Written in New Juche's deep style full of lurid details of sweat, heat, cigarettes and blood. A bit more toned down than the other works and culminating in a series of bleak black and white photos from urban Thailand. It's probably the best introduction to New Juche I think.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

the unconscious of the western expat psyche be all like: i process my own abuse by enjoying the wests abuse funnelled into the the colonial architecture of rangoon and my disdain for too much garlic

[Andreas Jacobsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Southeast Asian resident and Scottish expatriate, New Juche combines these two sensibilities of his to give a poetic and emotionally charged anatomy of former British colony Burma's [Myanmar] capital Rangoon [Yangon].

Here, he explores the psychogeographic underpinnings of being a member of the colonizing tribe, in the heart of the land of the colonized, in a poetic raptus intertwining his childhood in despairing Thatcher-era Scotland, with his lonely disposition in run-down colonial estates in the Burmese capital.

He constantly juxtaposes the architecture of the city with his own body, creating a strange palimpsest map of man and memories upon monuments.

As in his former work 'Mountainhead', the prose is vibrant and emanates from a deeply personal and sensual writer's gaze. There is an intensity in his present tense writing that is really effective, often using repetitious acts [drinking beer and smoking cigarettes like an absolute madman], describing these actions over and over, in a way that decelerates the present moment into complete immersion [for the reader].

The amount of alcohol, tobacco, sweat, and grime is astounding and effective in placing the reader in his stead and conjuring up a seedy atmosphere.

There is also an inquest into the brutal colonization of Burma [from the Brits], riffing especially on the works/life of George Orwell and his time in the country, which seemingly contained some amount of police brutality from the famous writer's own hand. New Juche sort of aligns himself with Orwell, but in what I took to be a sarcastic or even contemptuous way.

Great writing on display here - if a little scant in volume. Not quite on the level of 'Mountainhead' in my opinion; which felt more whole as a work, and also had the added benefit of effective transgressive elements and even higher bouts of poetic beauty.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taking place in present-day Rangoon, Burma—as the author prefers to identify Yangon, Myanmar, out of deference to its time as a British colonial outpost, whose now-rusting and -crumbling, moss-covered buildings remind New Juche of the council housing of his youth, the British version of urban house projects, where corruption—physical and moral—is part of the dissolute atmosphere—Bosun serves as an apologetics of place delivered via words and photography, a Down and Out in Paris and London, minus the sense of being down or out or, if those senses still obtain, then the sense that down and out are the narrator’s preferred states of being: Living in a polluted and broiling city where heat and humidity are assuaged via drinking, smoking, and whoring.

[Nicolas Koutsourais · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disregards all the prostitution and personal abjection to focus solely on the architecture and its colonial history. Prurience is on full display as he becomes aroused by the walls, their colonial history and his role as the "colonist".

[Josiah Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boudicia’s statue stands in the memory of Boyle’s breast in the blubbing of Burma.

[Cale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be wrong but this book is pretty much about walking around Burma gazing at all the decaying buildings, sweating, cold beer, garlic and a blue plastic bag of cigars. Wonderful read