begins, at the same time retaining the sense
of fate one associates with a tall tale.
Jacob Appel earns our respect through
his commitment to characters, sometimes
struggling to make sense of their lives,
sometimes unexpectedly involved in situ-
ations that might happen when someone
new enters what they thought was nor-
mal life. His style is straightforward, simple
even, without being overly minimal or man-
nered. These stories will hold you.
W. M. Hagen
Oklahoma Baptist University
Virve Sammalkorpi
Children of the Cave
Trans. Emily Jeremiah & Fleur Jeremiah.
London. Peirene Press. 2019. 148 pages.
Picture a Russian cave two hundred years
ago. Myths persist that it holds “a small tribe
of forest dwellers.” Into this uncharted ter-
ritory marches an expedition searching for
descendants of ancient Paphlagonia border-
ing the Black Sea. What this scientific team
finds is fableworthy.
Finnish author Virve Sammalkorpi’s sev-
enth novel is the first in English, translated
by a mother-daughter team. Children of the
Cave won the 2017 Savonia Literature Prize
(City of Kuopio) and the Kuvastaja Fantasy
Prize (Finland’s Tolkien Society).
In this story, Professor Jean Moltique,
renowned French explorer, leads ten men
into the woods. He’s invited young Iax Ago-
lasky, a Russian who studied French in
Paris, as interpreter and documentarian.
Present-day remnants of Agolasky’s journals
convey a fairy tale about “the children of
shadows.”
These faunae exhibit both human and
animal traits. Perhaps an extinct offshoot of
long-lost hominin relatives? Possibly hob-
bits? Yeti? Werewolves? Cubs? But... where
are the adults? Three decades before Dar-
win, Moltique is stumped in his methodical
study. What does it mean to be human?
Agolasky sits patiently in the under-
brush observing, as did Jane Goodall with
chimpanzees and Dian Fossey with moun-
tain gorillas. He leaves small gifts like his
mother’s hand mirror, slowly befriending
the children: Katya, Buutje, Julia, and espe-
cially the maternal Petite, known as Anna.
Agolosky’s notes contain naïveté and
wonder. A self-proclaimed bookworm, he’s
“a collector of tales,” keeping three differ-
ent diaries (one in Russian, which Moltique
cannot read). The eight assistants are “no
conversationalists,” so Agolasky has only
Moltique—who seems less and less trust-
worthy. Soon Agolasky feels a closer kinship
with the children, whose emerging history
casts them as society’s rejects.
Five years into the mission, the men
descend into animalistic behaviors—echo-
ing the narratives of Anansi the Spider, Wil-
liam Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Virve Sammalkorpi based his saga on
the 1990s work of Finnish visual artist
Pekka Nikrus: photo images of Les enfants
des ombres, plus Iax Agolasky’s written
biography. Sammalkorpi ponders “this new
form of documentation” called photogra-
phy, weighing the merits of words versus
pictures as he considers research, greed,
parenting, faith, and death.With deft David Copperfield moves,
Sammalkorpi keeps readers uncertain of his
account’s truth. What’s real and what’s illu-
sion? “It’s dangerous to be different where
everyone else is alike,” he warns. “Have you
noticed?”
Children of the Cave resounds as a com-
mentary on the present.
Lanie Tankard
Austin, TexasNyla Ali Khan
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s
Reflections on KashmirNew York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2018. 215
pages.In the insightful introduction to her latest
book, Nyla Ali Khan remarks that the “pri-
mary readership will comprise students and
scholars of South Asia.” This academic sub-
set should not be thus circumscribed. There
is much here that any citizen of any state
could absorb as a series of object lessons in
the nature and propagation of a democracy
that deserves to endure.
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, even after
his 1982 passing, remains a towering inspi-
rational figure in Kashmir and a nemesis to
authoritarians in both India and Pakistan.Books in Review
102 W LT SUMMER 2019