Did Trump Surrender to Iran?

Bel Canto by Anne Patchett, a novel about a hostage taking based on real events with an ending that both shocked and disturbed me. And I'll be talking about the reasons for my shock and disturbance in the final segment. But I want to open with some thoughts about something that is very much not in the news. You know, we are we have had a s a spring of intense emotion, intense uh intense activity, the war with Iran, marches Israel, Palestine, so many issues, battles inside the Democratic Party.

And as all of this has unfolded, I find myself thinking Whatever happened to climate change? Do you remember that? It used to be a big deal, climate change. It used to be an issue that formed the basis of political parties. It was supposed to be the reorganizing form of all of our politics.

When um President Obama described his hopes for his administration back in two thousand and nine, uh he hoped that this would be the moment when the pro when climate change would cease to unfold. And here it is. Deep into the twenty first century, long after Al Gore t uh made his movie An Inconvenient Truth that put this issue so much on the national agenda and especially so much on the agenda of forward thinking people and liberals and progressives, it's just gone.

Now, it's not hard to explain why this has happened. Uh you can you can see the explanations. First, um climate change delivered v surprisingly little political payoff to either party that undertook the issue. Environmental issues generally are

appeal most strongly to people who have a little bit of leeway in their lives, a little bit of margin of error. Um, if you're if you're worrying about where uh how you're going to pay the next rent bill, you don't have a lot of mental energy to think about longer term problems. Your problems are so pressing.

It's people with a little bit more comfort who think about environmental issues. And when people with a little bit more comfort are the swing group in American politics, as they were when environmental issues mattered so much in the 1970s, then environmental issues are ways to move those swing voters. But when the people with a little bit more scope, a little bit more room are locked up inside the Democratic coalition.

And the swing group becomes instead uh more economically hard pressed, working class voters, especially male working class voters, the environmental issues are not going to move them the way they do the people who used to be swing voters, but are now locked up in the democratic coalition. So that's a reason.

And there's a there's a second reason that is not so flattering, which is the politics that get people excited are politics with heroes and villains, opportunities to feel strong emotion against other groups of people. I mean Israel Palestine is perfect for this because whichever side is on, you can get really mad at people on the other side, and it is actually people.

that are there on the the other side is people. So if you're pro-Israel, you get mad at the people who are anti-Israel. If you're anti-Israel, you get mad at the people who are pro-Israel. Um it's very emotionally fulfilling and exciting. But the climate issue has no human villains. Or rather, the human villains of the story are us ourselves.

Now, some people have tried to make the oil companies the villain. The fossil fuel companies did this to us, but that is too obviously far-fetched to believe. The oil companies, the energy companies, they're just as happy to sell solar panels or windmills or to um install electric power stations. They have no attachment to the business that made them grow up. And indeed, many of the companies that have been forward leaners.

into the spa into the clean energy space have been the traditional oil companies of the past. And he says, we're here to make a buck. We're not here to sell oil. We're here to make a buck. If we can make a buck selling solar panels, we'll do that. We're pretty on a we're corporations. We don't have feelings. We don't have attachments. We don't have nostalgia. The reason the climate change problem is hard.

It's because fossil fuels offer a very accessible way to achieve abundant lifestyles using existing technology. And to make the energy transition that a response to climate change requires means disruption in the lives of all of us. We will probably have some costs. We may have higher taxes. Uh we may have to shift from one way of uh living our lives to another.

Now, in the early part of the climate change debate, some of the people got most excited about climate change where people thought, right, this is an opportunity to force down standards of living, to make us all live t more threadbare and uh frugal lives. Um there are some people who find that very exciting, but they're not very numerous.

For most of us, the question was how do we make an energy transition at reasonable cost? And that's a technical problem. Um that's a policy problem. That doesn't have clear villains. And or rather, as I say, if the if there are villains, they're villains. The villains are us who are used to a certain way of life and are reluctant to change it and don't want to have to pay anything more to m pay for the transition from

gasoline-powered automobiles to cars that run on electricity that is supplied by a non-climate-changing source like nuclear power or wind power or solar power. It also means that again, we will may have to pay higher taxes along the way to finance the trans Lacking clear villains, lacking clear heroes. The policy is not very emotionally sad. But that doesn't make it any less compelling. And one of the questions.

My bitternesses about what has happened to American politics over the past ten years is that the d the completely unnecessary debate we've had about should America be a democracy or not? Should the president live take bribes or not, has distracted us from solving problems that are not as emotionally exciting, but are really urgently compelling to our survival as a species, like how do we sustain the livelihoods of billions of human beings?

without destroying the planet and making in in ways that uh or harming the planet in ways that make future livelihoods uh difficult for the next generation or next two generations of human beings. That's a problem worth worrying about, and yet we seem to have lost all interest in doing the worrying.

I dearly hope that along with the many other pieces of unfinished business that have been neglected over the past decade, of so much trauma over so little justification, That when we get through to the to the next chapter, whatever it is, we can resume caring about things that really matter, that'll make huge differences, and that future generations will be quite impatient with us for neglect.

Climate change is one. It's not the only one, but it's the one that we are in danger not of needing to discover, but in danger of having forgotten.

A graduate of Rutgers in Columbia, she also earned a law degree at Georgetown before embarking on a career of reporting from some of the world's most dangerous and hostile places, now including Donald Trump's Washington DC. Vivian, welcome to the David From Show. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Um start with Washington DC. The president, the White House, the larger Capitol. Do you think we've sufficiently absorbed the magnitude of what has just happened here? And what has just happened here?

And I gotta tell you, David, one of the really stark uh questions that we have going into this is how realistic it is. It is very ambitious. Um, it it promises a lot to Iran that some of the president's own allies really are not happy with, including sanctions relief, total sanctions relief if they scale back their nuclear program, among other things.

And you know, right now there's this big question hovering about whether or not this is sort of the landmark deal that everybody has hoped for. Forty seven years of tensions with Iran. Um, JCPOA aimed to sort of reduce some of those tensions and it was an imperfect agreement. Even President Biden, who was part of that administration, would say so himself.

And so, you know, there was constantly this effort. The Republicans and particularly Donald Trump campaigning on this notion that JCPOA was flawed because of the fact that it ha it offered sunset clauses, which, you know, temporary um temporary expiration dates for some of these for some of the clauses and that it somehow did not work. I mean that was really the the the at the core of the argument was that JCPOA did not work.

And Iran has still been a belligerent actor in the region for for too long. Now, I want to remind um your viewers and listeners that President Trump actually pulled out of the JCPOA in um his first term. And really the rapid enrichment of uranium that we saw in Iran took place in the years that followed. And so, you know, this question of did JCPOA was JCPOA flawed and did that make Iran a dangerous actor? Was it the fact that we pulled out?

of um the JCPOA that, you know, basically gave them free reign to do whatever they want. I think most objective people would tell you it was both. It was in pr imperfect agreement. And also Withdrawing from the agreement didn't help. Strengthening the agreement would have been the more ideal solution. And so now President Trump

argues that they are starting from scratch. But I think he goes into this now months after this conflict began, way more realistic about how fraught with challenges this issue is. how difficult it is to get Iran to comply, but also to kind of undo the bad blood that had been that has accumulated not just in the last four months, but in the last forty seven years.

on top of everything else, President Trump now talking about the fact that everyone else has nuclear energy in that region, so why not Iran as well? And so he seems to be even stepping back from some of the Biggest issues that he had with Iran going into this.

His determination to put a final, permanent, total end to the Iranian nuclear program, his desire to um impose American will on Iran to be a better actor in the region, maybe to achieve some kind of regime. Um the United States threw everything it had at Iran, n air power, naval power. Not everything because we didn't use land forces, but air and naval power in a campaign that cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

And at the end of the campaign, Iran still had a capable military missile and drone program. And the United States the Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a completely predictable action. The United States tried to force the opening and failed. So the thesis is the United States lost this war on the battlefield. It did not achieve any of the things it set out to do.

And not just a strategic defeat, but an operational defeat because it couldn't force open the Strait of Hormuz, the predictable Iranian response. It couldn't control Iranian missile and drone activity. The United States lost the war. It's now

understandably is struck a very disadvantageous piece. The interim agreement is bad enough because it gives Iran all kinds of flows of money, sanctions, relief that with which it can rebuild, whether or not it ever gets the promised land of three hundred billion dollars. And this war leaves the United States a much diminished actor, not only in the region, but in the world.

write treaties, you know, a lot of bad blood goes into it. And even though they're agreeing, you can't sort of wash away decades of uh of hostilities. That being said, They are almost bracing themselves for potential failure. And what failure looks like is um, you know, i i the Iranians could not open the strait. The Iranians could not try to scale back its proxies.

the Iranians could, you know, still uh engage in uh warfare in terms of hitting Gulf allies and its neighbors or hitting Ir Israel for that matter. all of those the all of those things, not to mention, of course, pursuing a nuclear program in secret if it want if it tried to and wanted to. all of those things would be um deal breakers. And yet there is no one I talk to in the administration or out of the administration that thinks that Iran will not

try to engage in at least one, if not all of those. And so the question then becomes you know, how is this How can you be serious about this when you are openly admitting the fact that you believe that Iran will renege on everything that you're talking about? I mean How how do you take them seriously? And they keep on saying, Well, if they don't do it, we're just gonna go back to bombing. Yeah.

That's what these people seem to me like, that they have just started a war, lost it, lost it not only at the negotiating table, but lost it on the battlefield. And they are pretend and and they're pretending to others and frighteningly, maybe even pretending to themselves.

that they have not just suffered an ignominious defeat on every point, including starting on the battlefield where they couldn't suppress the Iranian missiles, couldn't deal with the drones, couldn't reopen the Strait of Hammuz, they lost the war. That's why they're losing the negotiation.

For the inevitable the inevitable action by Iran of closing the Strait of Hormuz. where at least if this war were to go on, we could have minimized some of the economic pain, in particular for the constituents that will be going to the polls in November, not to reduce it all to elections.

If there's nothing else but politically minded people operating, then why wouldn't they at least try to minimize the electoral pain that they would feel while also trying to accomplish something really uh incredible in the Middle East? through the spamming campaign.

And there there are answers. They're just very expensive. And I think what happened to the Trump administration is they didn't make any appeal to public opinion. They didn't get a vote in Congress. They said, We are going to do a war. We're going to do it completely solo without with Israel as our only ally and may and some regional clients, but they won't contribute much. And we're going to do all of this because it'll be so quick and it'll be over before anybody knows it.

is because I say when I go up in front of Congress and say that the Strait of Hormouths will close, gas prices will be elevated for four months, six months, eight months, a year. Yeah, I say, I don't know how to give that speech. I don't know the American people will accept it, so I don't do it. Trump said, well, let me just bypass the whole asking for permission phase.

And then deli and this this war will be over in a week. And then when it wasn't, he was stuck because he it wasn't that they hadn't planned it, it was that they didn't believe the plans that are in massive you know, computer files all over the Pentagon, as you say, and the British government, everyone has thought about this. They just chose not to believe it because They're arrogant and stupid.

inflation is starting to uh to show signs and he, you know, obviously made that comment a couple of days ago where he talked about I love inflation, you know, sort of a flipping comment. Um, he's frustrated and you know, I hear it from his advisors constantly that they're d he he's trying to

push his advisors to understand why this happened, why it went so badly, you know, why would couldn't we just defeat them? We have the greatest military in the world. Why are the Iranians still fighting us? Why are they still shooting drones at us? And this is something that has really aggravated him. It's also woken him up to the consequences. And so, you know, in part because of that, you see the vice president as now being the face of this this negotiation.

Before this war, that was a mystery. Could the Iranians close the Strait of Armuz? What would happen if they did? What would the Americans do in reply? And every because of that state of uncertainty, Iran was somewhat deterred. Now, the Iranians, everybody knows the answer. Iran can do it. The United States can't stop it. Iran has won. Iran controls the state of Hormuz, and the United States has accepted that, and that is surrender. That is defeat. And I am really quite alarmed.

That it's not just salesmanship that the administration says we've got a deal, but they genuinely don't understand the dumb thing they've done and how much worse off the United States is than it was on the twenty seventh of February.

Um arrogance, stupidity, and the inability to realize that your wallet is gone. And they're gonna be reaching for that wallet to pay the dinner bill, and they haven't got it because they gave it to the Iranians in front of the eyes of the whole world, and everyone knows that except them.

to shift their focus from military targets. I mean there's not there's not none, but there are few left that would actually really make a a a dent in the Iranian capabilities. And so they kept on saying they're they're running out of kinetic targets. And so economic warfare is where they were taking things. They wanted to inflict pain on the Iranian regime through economic warfare, which is why we saw the blockade of the strait.

And other measures taken, a couple of added sanctions, even though there's very tough sanctions on Iran already. And so they were running out of options to punish Iran for its its actions. And so that's the other alarming thing. aspect of this is that all if all of this falls apart, we go back to war.

Hell no. We are not going to be funding any reconstruction. They are absolutely dreaming. And I said, didn't they consult with you guys before putting this in? And they said, no, we haven't seen any of this text. This is the first time we're seeing. They said we've been consulted in the process, but we haven't seen the text.

And so that was actually a surprise to in a lot of them and they are adamantly refusing. They were refusing to take part in this war to begin with. If you recall back in February when all of this when the discussions about possibly launching war on ra on Iran began. Gulf allies who are host to US bases not only insisted they didn't want to take part in the war, not only insisted that the US not use the bases

in their countries as launching points for this war. Some of them even were reluctant to allow flyover rights for US military jets because they did not want to be seen as assisting the US or Israel in this war. And so you flash forward, you know, they came to a point where in the first couple of weeks when uh Ayatollah Khamanai was killed.

And um, you know, they were really taking out the senior leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Gulf countries that I spoke to and my my senior sources there were like, okay, look. It's begun. At this point there's no turning back. And at this point, they need to just finish this. They need to make sure that that nuclear program is decimated. They need to make sure that the really, really radical leadership is gone.

And amazingly enough, now we're flash forwarding a couple months, much of that hasn't changed. The Gulf allies still believe that Iran is. While weakened, it is still a threat to their countries. They believe that um the the the Ayatollah, the mullahs are still capable of dictating and and really wreaking havoc in the region. They also believe that there's probably deeper grievances against them because they were seen, even though they were hit very hard.

even though they were seen as not wanting to get involved in this, they they believe that the Iranian government sees them as sort of an extension of the Iran of the US and Israel. The Emirates, who are probably the most hawkish of all the Gulf countries, actually feel like enough wasn't done that they still want to see more leadership taken out. And this is one of the big concerns that even Republican hawks have. You know, they share the Emirates view where they say

i i you have very similar circumstances to Venezuela here where we do not have regime change happen and the same players are still involved and if the same players are still involved, especially in the case of Iran you have the same destabilization force and the same potential for um no change in behavior. And so again, it's we went through all of this. I interviewed um Vice President Bance a few days ago before we're sitting here talking.

Um it was it was in connection to his book. But I threw in a couple of non-book related questions right before we we hung up the phone. And one of the things I asked him, I said, You were obviously the biggest skeptic. And yet here we are, we are on the cusp of having a deal. Was it worth it? Was the economic pain worth it? Was the um the decimation of of US munitions worth it? You know, even the losses of lives of the of the service members that were killed, was it worth it?

And um he said, Sorry, I gotta go. And he hung up the phone. It was the end of the call.

And the United States gave up on this war with the Iranians still shooting. Um and the United States gave up on this war with the Iranians in control of the Strait of Hormuz and with a treaty that leaves them forever ineffective control of the Strait of Hormuz. Do the regional governments know that?

That they are trying to rein him in and try to um build on the ceasefire with maybe a more lasting peace. But they offer the caveat that this does not include, first of all, withdrawal from Lebanon, and this does not include Israel uh fighting back in self-defense. And so that for me leaves a major question mark because the entire premise of Israel launching this war was because Netanyahu argued that it was in self-defense, that it that Iran posed a threat to.

Israel and that Lebanon put well Hezbollah specifically poses a threat to to Israel and so they have to do this in response. And so a week from now, two weeks from now, five months from now, if Israel decides Iran is threatening them, do they launch a full scale attack again without the US at this point? That is a big question and it can easily happen.

And we have seen, although for the most part Netanyahu will coordinate with Washington and will coordinate with President Trump and almost get permission in these cases, we have seen in recent years that he has not done that. It has aggravated Trump. and it has really um caused a friction in the relationship that we were not expecting in a Trump term.

And uh as President Trump is demanding that Israel adhere to an agreement that not only did they not sign, but they weren't allowed to read.

greater ambitions of territorial gains, but also eliminating what is perceived as the regional threats. Iran was the big elephant in the room there where, you know, this war was and so He is the wild card in particular. It's not so much the Israeli government as it is mentioned in Yah. so long as he is feeling emboldened enough that his political future even hangs on the ability to carry out these goals territorial gain and eliminating eliminating these threats, um perceived threats.

That is gonna be the big question.

How, in your estimation, uh how much of what the United States has done in the region, especially since February twenty eighth, but even before, is affected by the fact that the key players have accepted these vast sums of money? Something that is just uh a s so astonishingly shocking. And and even if you don't think it's affected the players, what do people in the region think?

And he was the one that was going around negotiating, including the the Abraham Accords, which objectively were just ex an extraordinary um effort, where they got several countries to normalise relations with Israel, several Muslim and Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel. Um Saudi Arabia was the the big one that they were aiming for. They did not succeed in that. Neither did the Biden.

But in the course of that time, Jared Kushner, who um I did a profile of Jared in twenty twenty four, just before the election, before the Wall Street Journal, very long one, about his business. But um also interviewed him about potential conflicts of interest if his father-in-law were to be re-elected at that time.

And he it was an on the record interview obviously and he insisted to me, said, you know what? The bottom line is I'm not breaking any laws and anyone who wants to suggest otherwise can come out. And so that is the approach of the second Trump administration. You have ethical violations over here, and you have law-breaking actions.

And they like to swim in the middle. You know, they don't really care so much about the ethical element of it. They think that those ethical rules were written by the establishment. They're archaic and they don't apply to the common sense approach of doing business either domestically or in foreign foreign policy.

And so that transactional relationship that Jared Kushner has with the Gulf Is, uh, he's very close with a number of them, particularly um Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, who is about the same age as Jared.

they bonded. They talk on WhatsApp all the time. You know, he has that kind of relationship with all of those leaders from his first term where he was trying to get diplomatic deals. And that continued into the uh the firm that he established, the equity firm that he established, where he then continued those relationships in order to get access to their countries and and other countries as well, um, to do business.

Of course, as President Trump went to get re-elected the second this to second time around in 2024 or the third time he tried to get re-elected, then the question became, you know, this is this is a violation of ethics.

Dubai had a little bit of an edge because of the fact that it was seen as this glitzy liberal place on the Gulf and so it did so with retail, with tourism, things like that. While Saudi Arabia did not have that, it definitely did try to lure investments of different kinds. And Jared Kushner kind of represented the kind of investment. that they in the earlier years were trying to lure. Now they're trying to kind of do what Dubai is doing as well and liberalize in the process of doing so.

This war exposed exactly why they've been trying to do that, because the minute that the Iranian bombs started flying, although they've been very lucky in the sense that the hits to their country have been minimal. exception being Qatar, which got hit pretty badly. It's gas reserve its gas um got hit pretty badly. Tourism slowed down to almost a screeching halt. Um, retail was not selling'cause people weren't going out to the malls while they're seeing pops and explosions in the air.

And they started to see th and of course their their oil is not getting out either. And so they started to see the real vulnerabilities of their economic model. And so go and try to talk to a Saudi right now or an Emirati and tell them you shouldn't be doing business with Jared Kushner because that's a conflict of interest. They're gonna be like Okay, sure thing.

they can snap back and go to the way things were. That might be naive. That might be naive. I don't know a lot of people who are desperate to go back and, you know, hit up the malls in Dubai right now while things are still uh you know, uncertain. And so that might be naive. However I do think that they they believe that it could snap back and

I think that the jury will be out until we see what happens in the coming months and years and whether or not they really are able to snap back. If they can't snap back in the way they did then I think you're gonna have a re recalibration of the relationship. But I will say this. I lived in the Gulf during the economic crisis um of two thousand eight. I moved there in two thousand eight.

In to I moved to Dubai. I I was in the region already, but I moved to Dubai in and Abu Dhabi in two thousand eight, two thousand nine and I was there until two thousand twelve. There was a sense that Dubai was definitely that the g whole Gulf was done. That this effort to you know, all they had was hydrocarbons. That was the only thing that kept them going. And everything else, all these other efforts and real estate and shop and you know, tourism and retail

All of that was just a cake dream. That it wasn't it wasn't gonna work out, you know, that's not what this part of the world is for. And obviously it all crumbled so fast after the economic crisis and so everyone thought they were done. They bounced back. They bounced back even stronger than before. It took a few years, but they did. And so I think they are hoping that the lessons learned from sort of that crisis.

might propel them this time around and that they're more equipped this time around to bounce back after this conflict. But obviously a war is different than a financial crisis. So we'll see if people really do want to go back. I'm gonna be very interested in watching.

Investments that don't look very market based at all. Even if they were market based, it would still be disturbing, but they they look either like Bribes or like extortion. I mean, what what if you're in Abu Dhabi, if you're in Dubai, if you're in Qatar, and you know that your American counterparty is on your payroll, how how does that make you think about the United States?

As I mentioned at the top of the show, my book this week is Anne Patchett's Bel Canto, a novel published in two thousand one that touches on powerful themes of community, loss, and grief. Um it's a book that won all kinds of accolades when it was published in 2001, all of which it deserves. I found it a very touching and affecting book.

Except for an ending that really troubled me. And the ending is what I'm going to discuss today. So if uh if you haven't read the book and you don't want a spoiler alert, govern yourself advisedly because I'm going to reveal the whole plot and the and the surprise ending in order to discuss both.

So here's the story. It's based on a true incident that took place in the middle nineteen nineties in Peru when terrorists seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador to Peru. That terrorist seizure was ended with a police raid that killed the hostage state. So the story in Belcanto is similar, but not exactly the same. It takes place in an unnamed South American country. Uh that is seeking foreign investment.

In order to get the foreign investment, they have invited a Japanese businessman and his entourage to come to a dinner at the home of the vice president of the country, where they will wine and dine the Japanese businessman and try to entice his corporation to invest in the country. The Japanese businessman doesn't like to travel and doesn't have serious plans to make the investment, but he is an enormous enthusiast for operations.

And in order to win him, to woo him, the country has also invited the greatest soprano of the age, Roxanne Coss, to come at vast expense and sing six songs after dinner for the delight of the businessman and to get him to the dinner to discuss the foreign investment. Everything goes beautifully. The the flowers, the the beauty the night is beautiful, the flowers are beautiful, the settings are beautiful, paintings are there from the National Art Gallery in the home of the vice president.

There is one hitch at the beginning, which is the president of the country who's supposed to adjourn preside over the event, he bailed. And the reason he mails is because the president is an addict of a s soap opera, and that night's episode is an exc especially exciting one, and he doesn't want to miss the exciting episode, so he doesn't show up.

With the result that when terrorists burst in through the ac air conditioning ducts to seize the president, he's not there because he's home watching a soap opera. And so as a very unsatisfying consolation prize, they take prisoner all the other attendees, the vice president of the coun country, the Japanese businessman in his entourage, the opera singer, many other people.

Um, it's a community that becomes quite intimate in a lot of ways. Now, this community begins with enormous inequalities of wealth and standing. The guests at the party are uh corporate executives, they are ambassadors, they are wealthy people from uh the host country. Um, they are all kinds of pe they they are important people. They are wearing tuxedos and the women are wearing ball gowns, the men have expensive watches.

Um the hostage shakers are from the most impoverished classes of the country. They're many of them are very young. They speak Quechua, not Spanish as their first language. Some of them are illiterate, but gradually this new community forms and they're bound together by two connections. The first is the Japanese businessman has brought with him his translator.

a man named Jen, uh a uniquely gifted person who's able to learn languages at the drop of a hat. He speaks not only j his native Japanese and English and s and Spanish, but also French and Russian, sp has some Czech. He he just has he learns languages again the way uh the way y you would learn the solution to a crossword puzzle. And he forms a kind of multilingual pup uh node that connects people through the miracle of language.

And then Roxanne Coss, the great singer, she begins to practice to keep her scales going, and her music becomes a bond that unites them. Art and literature become the bonds of connection through this seemingly unequal community. And as the community develops, we discover among the Hoshitakers unsuspected skills.

One of the young boys turns out to be quite gifted as a uh as a chess player. Another has a beautiful voice and receives singing lessons and may be on his way, possibly to a great career in opera of his own. And as as the community develops,

I even more intimate relations we form. There are two love affairs that break out, one between the Japanese businessman and the ra opera singer, Mr. Husakawa and Roxanne, and the other between Jen, the translator, and one of the young girls who's among the Tosha takers, Carmen.

Jen and Carmen fall in love, the opera singer and mister Huzukawa fall in love. They actually spent are able to find ways through um to to spend the nights with each other. The women have all been released early from the hostage taking situation. Um the staff of the house has been released early, and so we we have

All the men, uh the uh the hostage takers, the hostage taken men, and then uh a couple of women among the hostage takers and the hop opera singer. So it's a very unequal community of men and female, but just enough that love can spread. And so it does between the Japanese businessman, mister Hosukawa and and the opera singer, and between Jen and Carmen, the Hosh take.

Then comes the police raid, which is described with vivid brutality of just mowing people down, no attempt to take prisoners, bullet, bullet, bullet, bullet, and one bullet, the same bullet. kills both Mr. Hosikawa and Carmen. He is Mr. Husakawa actually is trying to shield Carmen at the moment of the police raid, and the same bullet kills them both, thus wrecking the symmetry of the two love pairs. Uh The opera singer loves loses her lover, and Jen, the translator, loses his lover.

And that's the end of the main part of the book. And then comes the epilogue, and it's some months later, and we're in the city of Luca, and Jen and the opera singer are getting married. They have fallen in love after the loss of their uh of their mutual counter.

And it's really, just as the violence of the hostage taking was wa is shocking, to me this ending was terribly shocking. Now there's a big lively dispute about how to read this ending. The book has been around for a quarter century, and many people have had the same kind of shock reaction to it. And w one move to deal with the ending.

This is a you know what? The love affairs were the product of a highly abnormal environment, the intense pressure of the hostage taking, and as soon as the hostage taking ended, well of course the love affairs were exposed in their unreality, and a new pairing could form very naturally. Another was is to say that there's a kind of sardonic or

cynical move practiced by the author where she is casting doubt on the d uh reality of any human connection, apart from the these more metaphysical realities of art and literature. They're real, but human beings are not. But I found myself wondering whether the author author maybe believed, as a lot of people do, that human life is kind of dispensable.

And that human beings fill roles in each other's lives and when one of the roles is vacated, s a new person can be invited in to fill the old role. And whether there wasn't something actually in a novel that had so much heart, something kind of Heartless about the ending. Did the author understand that or did she not?

That's the thing I'm left haunted by and wondering about. And maybe the power of this work of art is that an ending that feels so curdling after the power of the intense experience we've lived through with the hostages and the hostage take.

Maybe that's a way of jolting us and asking us, well, do we accept this ending? Because maybe what you just want to do if you're uh And if I ever read the book again is read all the way to the epilogue and stop there and leave the story as tragedy rather than with the appended marriage and happy ending at uh attached so awkwardly to the very end.

Anyway, I d I do recommend the book, don't miss it, but um if you're like me, you may want to skip the apple log. Thanks so much for joining me today on the David From Show. Uh thanks uh to all of you who share the program and like it and communicate the word on social media. As ever, if you're minded to support this program and the work we do, the best way to do that is by subscribing to the Atlantic, where you'll see my work and that of all of my colleagues. See you next week here.