The Painter of Battles

The Painter of Battles (2009) Arturo Perez-Reverte translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

Andres Faluques was a renowned war photographer, but after he retired, he decided to again take up painting, which he’d given up in his youth for photography, because although he was a proficient painter, he wasn’t a great painter. But he was a great photographer.

However, now he is creating a mural that distills the things he has seen into a single work of art–a work that is being created in a building that is deteriorating.

His need to create what is essentially a temporary work if art gives us our first glimpse of the complexity of the mind of the painter of battles, and that complexity only increases as we learn more of his past life.

Although I’d read Arturo Perez-Reverte’s biography before, it was not until I started reading The Painter of Battles that I became truly cognizant of the fact that before he took up fiction, he was a war journalist.

What is interesting, however, is that for the most part, the horrors that are described are done so in an all but clinical manner, as he describes bloodshed and murder and rape from a distance, with little or no recognition that those are the bodies of humans–of men and women–in his photos and in his painting.

I’m describing it badly, but what I’m trying to make clear is that I initially feared this would be a gruesome book, but the scenes of destruction–although horrifying–are not vivid, as the painter of battles sees everything through the lens of his camera, from a distance.

What I also liked is that he addresses a question I have also wondered.

“At any rate, you kept working. You took the second photo after the man was dead at your feet… Had it occurred to you in the interim that maybe they killed him because you were there? They did it so you would photograph it?”

The painter of battles didn’t answer. Of course he’d thought of it. He’d even suspected that’s exactly what had happened.

But it is even more than that. How can someone view the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man without being changed, without it destroying your soul?

As I said, it’s not a gruesome book, even though it is full of horrors. Far more disturbing than the scenes the painter creates and describes, is that humanity creates such destruction, and that someone could see so much destruction and horror.

Although this is not light reading, it is still very very good, like almost everything else I have read by him. And although it does make you think, the heart of the story is the unfolding past of the painter of battles. And it’s not quite as depressing as you’d think.
Rating: 8/10

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