1947: WHERE NOW BEGINS by Elizabeth Asbrink

I started reading this thinking it was going to be a potted history of the year 1947 - the big ticket items of  the year that defined the age and contributed to how events unfolded in the years ahead, how people were affected and behaved, and how these events are still reverberating in our present history.

Yes, it is all that, but the author also manages to weave some of her own story and that of her family. The author is both Swedish and Jewish, this book being a translation. So there is a personal flavour to this book, but without it being a memoir. It follows then that some of the events and happenings hold greater importance to the writer than others, but she has been very even handed in her choices of important events and people of the year.

It is only 2 years after WWII officially finished, but for many the war and its terrible aftermath are still happening all around. So many people are homeless, jobless, and for the surviving Jews also stateless with nowhere to call home. This is the driving issue of the whole book - the result being the creation of the the state of Israel by some unholy land grabbing, orchestrated by the British, that 70+ years later the world is still feeling the repercussions of.  It was either that or have the Jewish population of Europe boating around the ports of the Mediterranean, not wanted anywhere. Quite an appalling state of affairs.

The British continue to create mayhem with their hasty decision to partition India before Gandhi and his supporters forced their hand. The lazy, irrational and ignorant way this momentous and disastrous policy was enacted will forever be a scar on the relations between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in this most diverse of countries.

Also in 1947 the Kalashnikov was created, the CIA is set up, Simone de Beauvoir writes The Second Sex - seen as the starting point for the rise of feminism. Christian Dior takes his creations to America, the Nuremberg trials get underway, the first single standardised programming language is created by a woman no less, Billie Holliday and other black performers/artists struggle in America for recognition despite their talent and popularity.

Why did the author choose this particular year? Because really every year has momentous events, significant people, terrible tragedies and monumental mistakes. I suspect the creation of the state of Israel which has gone onto have tidal wave effects rather than ripple effects ever since throughout the entire Middle East, and so onto the rest of the world, was the catalyst for her choice of this year.

I learnt a lot from this condensed biography of one year. And felt vaguely downhearted that nothing has changed - the same issues are still going on - Middle East, the continuing displacement of black Americans, #MeToo movement, the return of facism and nationalistic politics, religious conflicts in India, and so on. I doubt anything really has been learnt since 1947.