Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

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Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman is a deeply disturbing book. This scenario that unfolds around the life of its principal character and narr...
Friday, January 15, 2016

The Story Of An African Farm by Olive Schreiner

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Reading takes you there, sometimes even to places where you, the reader, may not want to go. Someone else, someone we have never met, did th...
Thursday, January 14, 2016

Joseph Hanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution Under Fire.

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Why might anyone want to read a book describing contemporary politics and international relations some thirty years after its publication? S...
Friday, October 5, 2012

Dreams In A Time Of War by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

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Put simply, Dreams In A Time Of War by Ngugi wa Thiong’o is a beautiful book. But it is also challenging, engaging, shocking, endearing and ...
Monday, February 20, 2012

From Cairo to Cape Town - A Home To Head For by Eric Olverson

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A Home To Head For is something of a marathon, not for the reader, but for the author, Eric Olverson. To be accurate, Eric’s tale is signifi...
Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

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When a book has won the Booker Prize and the film that it spawned has taken Oscars, the casual reviewer might be tempted to conclude that ev...
Monday, January 9, 2012

Another Side of the Slave Trade - Rough Crossings by Simon Schama

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No short review of Rough Crossings by Simon Schama could begin to do it justice. It is far too big a project, far too significant an achieve...
Thursday, August 25, 2011

Wole Soyinka’s Aké

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I expected to get a lot more from Wole Soyinka’s Aké than I did. It’s not every day that the childhood memoirs of a Nobel Laureate come to h...
Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A Grain Of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

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Returning to a masterpiece to re-examine its brilliance is always a risky business. There is always the threat of disappointment, a gradual ...
Tuesday, June 1, 2010

A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene

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Monsieur Querry never reveals his Christian name. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t want to admit his Christianity. Perhaps he possesses it, b...
Monday, May 24, 2010

The Viceroy Of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin

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Bruce Chatwin’s The Viceroy Of Ouidah masquerades as a small book. In 50,000 words or so, the author presents a fictionalised life that has ...
Monday, January 4, 2010

Perilous transition – Imaginings Of Sand by André Brink

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Imaginings Of Sand by André Brink was a second novel I recently encountered where an old woman, close to death, related a life story. The bo...
Saturday, November 22, 2008

A Sunday At The Pool In Kigali by Gil Courtemanche

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For me, Gil Courtemanche’s book, A Sunday At The Pool In Kigali, bore a great similarity to the screenplay for the film Hotel Rwanda. Having...
Monday, October 20, 2008

The Heart Of The Matter by Graham Greene

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Over forty years ago a new English teacher at my school answered a question asked by an eager student. The question was, “What do you think ...
Saturday, September 6, 2008

Before The Knife by Carolyn Slaughter

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In Before The Knife Carolyn Slaughter describes her childhood, a fraught, anxious prelude to an adulthood that continued to suffer from its ...
Monday, July 21, 2008

Towards Asmara by Thomas Keneally

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Towards Asmara by Thomas Keneally was eventually disappointing. As a process, the experience was strewn with beauty, vivid images and arrest...
Thursday, January 31, 2008

The Mission Song by John le Carré

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In The Mission Song John le Carré re-visits the world of espionage that we associate with his writing. He is a master of the clandestine, th...
Monday, December 3, 2007

A note on A Bucket of Ashes, a romantic novel by Jill Lanchbery

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A Bucket of Ashes, a romantic novel set in Britain and Nigeria, by Jill Lanchbery is publised by Libros International. At the heart of A Buc...
Sunday, November 25, 2007

A review of Going Home by Doris Lessing

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It is fifty years since Doris Lessing published Going Home, an account of her return to Rhodesia, the country where she grew up. By then in ...
Sunday, September 23, 2007

A review of Mukiwa by Peter Godwin

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Peter Godwin certainly has a story to tell. It’s a story of an idyllic, if unusual childhood, a disrupted but eventually immensely successfu...