In his hilarious new novel, The Indians Have Fun, author Thomas King, of Cherokee ancestry, imagines an ancient Indian couple traveling from Canada to Europe. While the lively Mimi is determined to follow in the footsteps of an ancestor who once visited Prague, the grumpy bird is more stuck with his demons, which are so present they have names.
“Maybe you should make some friends. Maybe you would spend less time with your demons,” Mimi says to her lover, a Cherokee and Greek photojournalist. While in the Czech Republic, the duo hopes to find a bag of family souvenirs that Uncle Leroy may have lost there a hundred years ago. However, Bird's torment crops up again and again in this quest.
The protagonist has a character named “Eugene” within him who represents self-hatred, as is the case with “all native peoples of North America,” Mimi’s mother Bernie once said. The latter, a Blackfoot from Alberta, inspired the couple's desire to follow in the footsteps of their ancestor Leroy, who had left his reserve in Canada to cross the Old Continent.
The Ontario novelist, to whom we owe most of all The Awkward Indian (2014), once again manages to address serious topics such as intergenerational trauma and pepper his story with jokes worthy of a humorist.
Catherine Ego, who translated this work from English to French, does justice to Thomas King's efficient writing. As usual, the author strings together rhythmic dialogues that feature a variety of lovable but sometimes annoying characters.
Bird, in pain both physically and mentally, constantly offers his bizarre reflections on the inconveniences that travel brings. “You have to be immortal to eat pizza,” he thinks, sitting at a table in a Czech restaurant where young people gorge themselves without fear of the processed meat clogging their arteries.
Running after dead or missing people
With “The Indians Are Have Fun” Thomas King delivers a crazy road novel in which geographical and temporal jumps between Canada, the United States, Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic multiply.
On his forays to find Uncle Leroy, but also his own father, Bird still asks himself: “How come I spend my time hunting dead or missing men?” »
However, during their adventures, the couple is hit hard when they encounter a horde of refugees in a Hungarian train station. Then new questions arise. “How often have we turned a blind eye to injustice? Averted your gaze in the face of intolerance? » asks Bird about his trip to this continent.
The photojournalist also sees Uncle Leroy as a refugee who fled to Europe from the constraints of his restraint and the racism in Canada. He was “dragged from one country and one language to another, with no fixed address,” he concludes.
Indians have fun
★★★★
Thomas King, Memory of Inkwell, Montreal, 2024, 392 pages