A blind Bulgarian chemist sits alone in his flat, sweltering in the Sofia summer heat. As he approaches his 100th birthday, his still sighted mind's eye inevitably ranges over a 20th century that brought constant revolution, both to him and to Bulgaria. He is Ulrich, the focal point of Solo, this kaleidoscopic, mesmerising, breathtaking novel by Rana Dasgupta. It's not hard to see why it has won so many plaudits (including the 2010 Commonwealth Writer's Prize).
Two comments made to him as a young man have haunted Ulrich. The first is from his domineering, self-made father:
"You are privileged enough, at a young age, to enjoy the society of talented and influential men — and all you can do is stammer and scratch, and hold your foot in your hand like a fool. You will not be a failure, my son. Whatever it takes, I will not allow it." (p15)
This was the father who built railways as a passionate, ideological believer in their potential for great good; who loved all things Germanic (hence the gift to his son of a very unBulgarian Christian name); who suppressed his early love for music by the wholehearted, modernistic fervour of the late industrial revolution. But he ended up a broken man after witnessing his beloved creations blown up or exploited in the cause of military advantage. There's a potent parable, just there. But it is his son who tells the story. Before he dies, having lived his life alone, he needs to leave a legacy. As his old friend Boris had said, "One day I will die. And you will die as well. All these thoughts in our heads will disappear." (p24)
Ulrich too showed an early love for music, and some of his closest friends were musical; but his father raged against this by throwing his violin in the fire. The different colours produced by the instrument's chemical components in the flames sparked a new passion: chemistry (pp19-20). And so he goes to study it in Berlin, during its Weimar heyday and as the Nazis begin to flex their muscles. This was the occasion of the second comment, albeit a passing one — but by the book's close, it is clear that this incident is still perplexing him decades later:
"When Ulrich picked up the papers that Albert Einstein had dropped behind him in the corridor, the scientist looked him in the eye and said, ‘I am nothing without you.’ Ulrich managed to say, ‘Nor I sir,’ as Einstein turned his back and ambled on. Ulrich has thought back so many times to this moment that the figure in the corridor transmuted into something more than a man. Now Einstein looks down on him with eyes that scan like X-rays, and his speech comes not from his mouth but from somewhere invisible and oracular." (p47)
And thus the book's themes are set in motion: how do you measure a life; how do you value it; how do you decide what is success or failure? Dasgupta takes a 100-year-life as a poignant prism for understanding the whole century — for Ulrich has survived modernity in some of its successes and horrors, through the extremes of anarchy, fascism, communism, and capitalism. And Bulgaria is the perfect vehicle for such a narrative, straddling the fault-line between Asia and Europe, having been an Ottoman colony and then a Soviet satellite, and now of course an EU member state.
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