News came last week that Zadie Smith, the 38 year-old English writer was named to the shortlist for the BBC’s National Short Story Award for “Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets”, which appeared in the Paris Review earlier this year. Smith, who maintains that she “only recently became comfortable with the [short story] form” is widely renowned for her novels, among them White Teeth and On Beauty. But Smith excels in storytelling in shorter forms, too. Smith’s short stories are deceptively simple in language and enormously rich in emotion, and ideas. They provide a powerful forum for discussion, as readers confront their own conflicted morality amid Smith’s characters.

In this installment of “A Text at Work” we invite discussion on Zadie Smith’s “Moonlit Landscape with Bridge”, available in the New Yorker. The story traces a Minister of Interior’s car trip from his home to the airport to make an escape to Paris in the wake of a terrifying natural disaster. Along the way he encounters countrymen fighting over basic necessities and is forced to confront his own role in his country’s violent past by an escaped prisoner who forces his way into the Minister’s car.

In an interview about the story, Smith describes the Minister as “discreet, efficient, ruthless” – a minor character in an unfolding international news story. He is recognizable to some, but at the same time, he is rendered unimportant by the drama and extent of damage to his country. He bears the markers of civilization – a finely made suit, a famous painting whose title is also the title of the story, a daughter planning to make her debut in Paris society. But these details cover — or perhaps go hand-in-hand with – a brutal past.

As we read, we may feel some kinship with the Minister. After all, doesn’t he offer money to his housekeeper? Doesn’t he open up his trunk to give water to the displaced? Isn’t it the citizens, themselves, who act ungrateful, who become animals when presented with food and water? Isn’t he the victim of an insane criminal’s games?

Then, upon such reflections, we wince. It is the Minister who feels such pride that he endangers himself and his driver by insisting on exiting the car, expecting a hero’s welcome. It is the Minister who blames the international media and fails to acknowledge his own complicity in the devastation that occurred. For all his fancy suits and fine paintings, it is the Minister who helped to mastermind a genocide, we learn.

In describing the circumstances of the creation of the painting that titles the story, Zadie Smith relates a quotation from the literary critic and philosopher, Walter Benjamin: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”  “Moonlit Landscape with Bridge” is powerful because it asks us to confront our own understanding of civilization. How might the trappings of civilization cover something far more insidious?

We invite you to share your reflections on Zadie Smith’s remarkable story. We offer a few questions as food for thought, but we invite your comment on any aspect of the story that intrigues you:

• Who is criminal in the story?
• What are the parallels between the unnamed country where the story unfolds and our own country?
• Is the elusive Paris free from such assaults on humanity?
• In what ways are the Minister’s past misdeeds part of his present?
• What is the real “story” here that the American and German film crews fail to capture?
• What elements of the disaster are natural? What is civilized and what is not?

For this sample Text at Work feature, we invite your ideas, questions and musings on Zadie Smith’s “Moonlit Landscape with Bridge” in the comments section below.

Happy reading!

Image: Aert van der Neer, Moonlit Landscape with Bridge, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 1990.6.1, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.