In the early pages of this strange and beautifully arresting novel by the prize-winning Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin, Amanda – the book’s principal narrator lies immobile and dying in a rural hospital ward.
“This isn’t normal, David,” she says to the boy who may be present at her side. “There’s only darkness, and you’re talking into my ear. I don’t even know if this is really happening.” “It’s happening, Amanda”, replies David (whose remarks all appear in italics). “I’m kneeling at the edge of your bed, in one of the rooms at the emergency clinic. We don’t have much time, and before time runs out we have to find the exact moment.”
The moment to which David is referring to is the point in Amanda’s life at which her death would become inevitable. In an effort to identify it, he has her relate the series of apparently-recent events that have propelled her into her current terminal condition.
The work that results from this undertaking, elegantly translated by Megan McDowell, takes the form of an unconventional and dreamlike dialogue in which Amanda, at David’s prompting, attempts to recount an afternoon that she spent with his mother, Carla, at a holiday home. Amanda can envision the details of this episode with clarity. She recalls seeing her daughter, Nina, cradling a stuffed mole. She remembers the straps of Carla’s gold bikini; her “forehead leaning against the steeringwheel” of a car she is unable to drive. She imagines “large plastic buckets of water” and glasses of iced tea.
But on these bright, and brightly haunting, details, she struggles to impose order: “I’m stuck”, she tells David. “I can see the story perfectly, but sometimes it’s hard to move forward.” And when she finds it impossible to proceed, she drifts into meditations on her current condition: “I’m going to die in a few hours. That’s going to happen, isn’t it? It’s strange how calm I am. Because even though you haven’t told me, I know. And still, it’s an impossible thing to tell yourself.”
David responds to Amanda’s faltering attempts to tell her tale with chillingly laconic and affectless interjections: “None of this is important. We’re wasting time.” “What else is happening in the yard?” “Keep going, don’t forget the details.”
These demands result in the emergence of the vague outline of a narrative, but it is not the one, or not the only one, David wants to hear. For in the course of her reminiscing, Amanda revisits a conversation with Clara in which Clara explains why, for years, she has been terrified of her own son, who six years earlier was poisoned by a local stream while out looking for his father’s missing stallion; was subsequently taken to see a mysterious woman in a greenhouse who claimed to be able to save him by separating his soul from his body and migrating it to another host; and who seems to be able to kill animals merely by looking at them.
With this strand of her fiction in place, Schweblin’s creation becomes even more shifting, elusive and menacing. It is seldom clear who David is, and from whose body he is speaking (at times he seems to bleed in and out of Amanda’s daughter, Nina); remembered events unfold with malarial incoherence (Schweblin’s creation is full of temporal and topographical disruptions); and there exists a pervasive and growing sense of danger and toxicity.
The town and its populace seem “cursed” (David’s word) by ecological disaster; Amanda is consumed to the point of neurosis by the idea of “rescue distance” – shorthand for her habit of constantly calculating how far she is from her daughter and how long it would take to save her from danger. And throughout, there is a persistent return to a motif – that of “the worms” – whose significance is never spelt out, but seems to relate to each of the maladies that waft through Amanda’s reveries.
This might give the impression that Fever Dream is a demanding and frustrating affair. But Schweblin's sublime command of form, together with the power, restraint and precision of her prose, result in a work of almost fathomless intellectual and psychological richness that unfolds with the compulsiveness of a thriller.
While Amanda edges inexorably towards her death, the idea that we can protect the people we love comes to look increasingly fragile. And as it does so, the carefully modulated force of Schweblin’s writing orchestrates a crescendo of emotional intensity that leaves you feeling cathartically enervated, yearning for talk, but “immobile in the languid silence”.
Matthew Adams is a regular contributor to The Review.
The Case For Trump
By Victor Davis Hanson
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
MANDOOB
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The Bio
Ram Buxani earned a salary of 125 rupees per month in 1959
Indian currency was then legal tender in the Trucial States.
He received the wages plus food, accommodation, a haircut and cinema ticket twice a month and actuals for shaving and laundry expenses
Buxani followed in his father’s footsteps when he applied for a job overseas
His father Jivat Ram worked in general merchandize store in Gibraltar and the Canary Islands in the early 1930s
Buxani grew the UAE business over several sectors from retail to financial services but is attached to the original textile business
He talks in detail about natural fibres, the texture of cloth, mirrorwork and embroidery
Buxani lives by a simple philosophy – do good to all
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
