Articles
A young woman poses for the cover of a magazine. A Canadian soldier serving in Kandahar falls in love with her photograph and sends her an email message. « The darling of Kandahar » is the tale of love, loss, and displacement against the background of the war in Afghanistan.
Available now from Linda Leith Publishing
What The Gazette said about The Darling of Kandahar
Mihali’s novel is a rambling first-person narrative that follows Irina, a young Montreal woman of mixed Greek and Romanian descent. Irina doesn’t hold back in commenting about her divorced parents, or her relationships at school, university and at work. She becomes the object of infatuation of a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan who saw her sexy photo in a newsmagazine (this part was inspired by a true story in Maclean’s). Mihali’s English prose is expository rather than poetic, but she is sensitive to the incidents that form human feelings and relations.
Victor Swoboda (The Gazette, April 14, 2012)
3…2…1…Launch
« Linda Leith launches publishing house at the Blue Met »
……Having said all that, it should also be said that the books are great. Salutin’s essay should spark some interesting discussions about what works and what doesn’t in public education (his answer is that almost anything will work), and Mihali’s novel is gorgeous and topical, inspired by a real-life event. I have a feeling Linda Leith will be publishing for a long time to come, churning out slim novellas and essays that are socially relevant and also formally unique.
Mike Lake (Rover 2012: Spring Issue, No. 15)
A review of The Darling of Kandahar by Felicia Mihali
The premise of Felicia Mihali’s new novel The Darling of Kandahar is taken from a real-life event. After a young woman appeared on the cover of the 2007 University Student issue of Maclean’s magazine, a Canadian soldier stationed in Afghanistan, apparently taken with the photo, wrote a letter that was printed in the magazine. The media began calling the cover girl “the darling of Kandahar.” Mihali fictionalizes this girl as Irina, a Montreal student who is asked to pose for the cover of Maclean’s and later receives an email with the subject line “Hello from Kandahar.”
This is Mihali’s first book written in English after publishing seven novels in French. It’s an ambitious book, considering its scope of topics: life as an immigrant in Quebec, religious beliefs, the historical founding of Montreal, and the human impact of the war in Afghanistan. But, perhaps meandering from idea to idea is an accurate portrayal of the mind of a 24 year-old girl, painting the world in broad, far-reaching strokes.
Seeing Montreal through the eyes of her parents, immigrants from Romania and Hungary, Irina describes the city with an outsider’s perspective, yet an insider’s insight, making interesting observations about the experience of immigrants living in Quebec: “Two solitudes is it? What happens, then, to the third one, the lonely immigrant side, left on its own or, even worse, caught up in political game and sacrificed in multicultural speeches?”
As a high school student, Irina and her best friend took pleasure in acting out religious plays about the missionaries who founded Montreal. The story of Jeanne Mance and de Maisonneuve, for instance, takes up several pages. Though a bit long-winded, the story is told in a charming way and demonstrates Irina’s ability to throw herself wholeheartedly into the stories of others. She is a character who lives in her head; she doesn’t enjoy going out with friends, and finds herself increasingly showing agoraphobic tendencies, like her mother.
Irina asserts on the first page that “Young women have stories to tell, too …” The stream-of-consciousness narrative can draw the reader in with its intimacy, but can also ring false at times: “I guess it’s time I told you about my family,” Irina self-consciously narrates. She walks us through her family history, failed romances, and current life as a university student, telling the stories of the people around her as a way to explain more of herself. Although perhaps lacking in stylistic elegance, the narrative captures Irina’s inner thoughts well. “You wouldn’t be wrong if you called me ordinary,” she says, and indeed some of her observations are mundane. Others grasp at something larger: “I still wonder about the briefness of things that can later on rouse huge emotions, when they do not destroy you. Ten minutes is long enough to kill a person.”
The temporary celebrity that comes with having her photo on the cover of a national magazine brings Irina a new self-awareness: “I felt like this kind of wave, just part of the mass of water in the sea for so long, and now suddenly here I was with my very own exi tence.” And it is in the resulting relationship between Irina and Yannis, the Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, that the book really hits its stride. Unfortunately, this doesn’t begin until more than halfway through the book, and the relationship isn’t given enough space to fully unfold. Theirs is not a straightforward romance; in fact, it’s not a romance at all, but a tense correspondence that is conducted entirely by email and fraught with misunderstandings. As a result, the reader may ultimately feel unsatisfied by all that is left unsaid between Irina and Yannis.
Review by Lesley Trites • Published in the: mtlreviewofbooks.ca Summer 2012 issue
Star-crossed in Kandahar
the daily review, Wed., May 9
Carla Lucchetta
From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, May. 08, 2012 5:00PM EDT
In 2007, a Canadian soldier stationed in Kandahar sent a letter to Maclean’s magazine to thank the editors for keeping him well informed, and also to compliment them for finding a new “pin-up” girl for him and his comrades to enjoy. He was talking about a wholesome-looking young woman posing as a student for the magazine’s annual university ranking issue. The young woman, Kinga Ilyes, became known as “the Darling of Kandahar,” enjoying a wave of media attention. The soldier, Sergeant Christos Karigiannis, unfortunately died a short time after he wrote the letter. The story is the subject of Montreal writer Felicia Mihali’s short novel (her first in English) and the first fiction to come out of Linda Leith Publishing, the new venture of the founder of Montreal’s Blue Metropolis literary festival.
Mihali imagines a brief e-mail correspondence between the soldier she renames Yannis and the darling, Irina. Both immigrants to Montreal, they do not flirt or reveal anything exceptionally personal, but rather discuss religion, politics at home and abroad, and the everyday life of combat and peacekeeping in Afghanistan. Irina does not let on that – through his long discourses on his activities in the Middle East, his attitudes toward its customs and the war in general – she hasfallen completely in love with him.
Twenty-four-year old Irina lives with her divorced mother, whose new sailor husband is away most of the year, an arrangement born out of convenience more than affection. Irina has had two previous boyfriends, but neither captured her attention like Yannis. The only other close person in her life has been a childhood friend, Marika, with whom she has lost touch. She fondly remembers the times they would re-enact the settlement of Montreal, playing the various missionaries, military leaders and politicians involved. Her longing for her old friend seems grounded in the same point of connection as with Yannis: religion, politics, strangers in a strange land.
Mihali has a great deal to say on these topics, as well as the status of Montreal’s immigrant community. The more compelling story of the budding – but tragically short – relationship between a lonely soldier and a solitary young woman suffers from too little space. It’s treated as a sidebar, rather than the main event. Yet, there are moments when the clunky expository prose happily gives way to more creative and imagistic storytelling. The star-crossed relationship concludes in Irina’s mind with one of the most romantic ideas around: that declaring her love for Yannis, not holding back because of fear or timidity, would have given him a reason to survive the war.
This returning thought seems too much for Irina. After Yannis’s death, her “pin-up” fame fades, as does her desire to find a new love, and she fully surrenders to the routines of life with her mother. Despite her claims that she has been unmarked by her parents’ divorce and other shifts in her young life, she seems unable to get past her experience of being a lifeline to her darling soldier and a darling to a bored media trying to take credit for a fairy-tale war story.
Carla Lucchetta is a writer and essayist for TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin. Her book Lonely Boy, sons writing about their absent fathers, will be published next year.
Felicia Mihali este una dintre cele mai interesante voci ale romanului contemporan, o prozatoare cu un talent înnăscut de povestitor, cu o viziune amplă asupra identității feminine de-a lungul epocilor și de-a latul meridianelor. O dovedesc romanele anterioare, scrise la început în limba maternă (Țara brânzei, 1998; Mica istorie, 1999) apoi – după emigrarea în Canada – în limbile franceză și engleză: Le Pays du fromage (traducere, 2022); Luc, le Chinois et moi (2004); Sweet, sweet China (2007); La Reine et le soldat (2005), Dina (2008); Confession pour un ordinateur (2009); The Darling of Kandahar (2012); A Second Chance (2019). Construind personaje puternice, de neuitat, autoarea expatriată la începutul anilor 2000 este marcată de problematica exilului, a condiției de imigrant prins între un trecut plin de decepții și un viitor nesigur. Cu atât mai mult în cazul femeii, situația de entre-deux este generatoare de angoasă, mai ales când trebuie să facă o nouă alegere: între doi bărbați.
Citește continuarea articolului AICI
De Elena-Brândușa Steiciuc
Jupanu, 27 octombrie 2022
Eu, Luca si Chinezul, un roman qui fera des ennuis même au Président du pays
Après une parabole biblique greffée sur la civilisation chinoise, la jeune écrivaine se tourne vers la réalité immédiate, avec un roman d’une actualité violente. Après le livre de début, Le Pays du Fromage, qui décrivait d’un œil cynique, mais sincère, le monde dégénéré du village roumain contemporain, c’est la ville qui entre dans l’attention de l’écrivaine, éduquée à l’école dure du journalisme roumain depuis ’89.
L’ÉVÉNEMENT DU WEEK-END, 3 mars, 2000
Love Story et presse de scandale
Après Le Pays du Fromage et La Petite Histoire, publiés l’année dernière, Felicia Mihali s’impose de nouveau dans les premières lignes avec un roman surprenant, qu’on lit du bout du souffle. Cette fois, le crayon aigu de l’écrivaine attaque un monde très familier pour elle, la rédaction d’un journal de scandale…. Les deux narrations qui s’entrecoupent sur un chemin sinueux, font preuve d’un talent bien cultivé, d’une vocation de véritable psychologue, d’une admirable capacité de bâtir des personnages et de décrire des morceaux de la vie réelle. Eu, Luca si Chinezul nous confirme, après les autres deux romans, que Felicia Mihali représente une voix vigoureuse et singulière de la littérature roumaine actuelle.
Gabriela Hurezean, NATIONAL, 23 février, 2000
Formula AS
Le troisième roman de Felicia Mihali, paru en moins d’un an après le premier, prouve qu’elle est une écrivaine professionnelle, de longue distance, vouée au succès populaire, bien qu’elle n’écrive point ce qu’on appelle « littérature de consommation« . Le talent et la facilité d’écrire dans des registres assez différents, le fait qu’elle n’écrive pas seulement pour le divertissement, mais parce qu’elle a vraiment quelque chose à dire, me détermine à lui prédire une carrière littéraire brillante.
Adriana Bittel, FORMULA AS, 20-27 mars, 2000
Eu, Luca si chinezul des coulisses médias et de l’amour oriental
L’auteure du Pays du Fromage et de La Petite Histoire récidive. Pendant les derniers huit mois elle est arrivée à la performance unique de donner sur le marché des livres encore un volume, Moi, Luca et le Chinois….Les deux mondes, surpris d’une manière tout à fait différente de la mode littéraire actuelle, confirment l’unicité d’une voix très originale d’une écrivaine qui appartient déjà au prochain millénaire.
Corneliu Ciocan, L’ÉVÉNEMENT DU JOUR, 1 mars 2000
Metrobus
« J’ai essayé de décrire le plus fidèlement possible le monde de la presse écrite où règne le goût pour la violence et très peu l’appétit pour la culture……Je reconnais que je suis une écrivaine extrêmement cynique. Je me suis questionnée moi-même à ce sujet et je me suis rendu compte que j’ai gagné cette qualité à l’école de la littérature néerlandaise…..Luca est un alter ego masculin. Il est l’ami idéal qui m’a sauvée de l’encombrement. Luca est l’image même de la culture qui nous semble faible, vulnérable, mais qui est très résistante pour autant. »
interview réalisée par Mariana Nicolae, METROBUS, 28 février, 2000
Articles traduits du roumain
La journaliste Felicia Mihali débute en force avec un roman au sujet de l’échec et de la solitude
….Felicia Mihali brise toutes les normes conventionnelles de notre littérature, débutant en force avec un roman qui choque non seulement par sa manière cruelle d’aborder les thèmes de l’amour et de la solitude, mais aussi par la précision aiguë de son expression stylistique. Polémisant violemment avec les prosateurs des « racines », Felicia Mihali constate amèrement que toute tentative de retrouver le passé est impossible. « Dès maintenant, rien n’arrêtera ma chute » voilà la dernière conclusion du livre. Jusqu’à ce moment-ci, personne n’a usé dans notre littérature d’une lucidité aussi cruelle. À 32 ans, Felicia Mihali promet de grands livres, non-conformists, inquiétants.
Ion Zubascu, ROMANIA LIBERA, 29 juin, 1999
Le début littéraire de la journaliste Felicia Mihali est remarquable.
Loin de ce qu’on appelle « littérature féminine » son roman et originel non seulement par thème, mais aussi par le style bref, sans le moindre artifice. Utilisant des moyens simples pour décrire l’atmosphère d’agonie qui domine, le roman de Felicia Mihali est révélateur pour la mentalité d’une génération entière: celle des jeunes qui ont perdu leurs racines et qui errent continuellement à la recherche de leurs repères.
Adriana Bittel, FORMULA AS, 9-16 août, 1999
Un talent de 24 carats
Le plus spectaculaire début en prose enregistré chez nous au dernier temps est celui de Felicia Mihali – 32 ans, journaliste à « L’Événement du jour ». Son roman, Le Pays du Fromage se remarque même du titre par un style offensif et démystificateur. Comme écrivaine, elle a les mouvements sûrs et rapides de ceux qui attrapent des serpents. Ce qui la caractérise est un mépris profond et, de même, un irrémédiable manque d’illusions. Des images de la décrépitude, des sons aigus, des odeurs désagréables, rien n’échappe à cette témoigne incommode.
Alex.Stefanescu, ROMANIA LITERARA, 11-17 août, 1999
La misophilie d’une vie déchirée
Le Pays du Fromage est le roman d’une chute psychique ou la « fiche clinique » d’une déchéance physique et d’une déroute morale. La confession d’une vie inutilement déchirée et marquée par la misophilie, le cynisme et la sexualité, régie par l’ennui ou par le désespoir. Un trajet fabulateur à travers l’hérédité érotique et malheureuse de la famille.
Dan.C.Mihailescu, 22, 7-13 septembre, 1999
Le terrible voyage de Felicia Mihali au Pays du Fromage
Le roman de début de Felicia Mihali est le produit d’une personnalité complexe, avec des perceptions aiguës et des états d’âme tellement bizarres. ….
On lit Le Pays du Fromage sans presque respirer, d’un bout à l’autre.
Gabriela Hurezean, NATIONAL, 24 juin, 1999
Le Pays du Fromage, le pays des abîmes du psychique féminin
Par son début, Felicia Mihali écrase tous les canons littéraires de chez nous. Son roman est un véritable choc pour les consommateurs de littérature roumaine contemporaine. Par les vécus de son héroïne, l’auteur détruit tout ce que peut signifier de l’innocence ou de la beauté dans la vie quotidienne. Les rappelles au monde de l’enfance ne signifient que la négation des anciennes valeurs du village traditionnel roumain.
Corneliu Ciocan, L’ÉVÉNEMENT DU JOUR, 24 juin, 1999
Dans la toile d’araignée de la féminité
Au bout des plans avortés, il y a finalement le cri de douleur d’une jeune femme intelligente mais mutilée par l’étroitesse de l’intimité. De l’horizon du village, de la médiocrité de la ville monte jusqu’à nous le message de quelqu’un soumis à des épreuves terribles.
Henri Zalis, LE CONTEMPORAIN, 6 avril, 2000
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