Verdict: carrot X 3
Reading memoir can resemble a Tolstoyan train ride, one of those satisfying trips during which a passenger, a stranger to the others in his compartment, tells a tale filled with fascinating characters, intimate relationships and detailed pictures of the sociology and culture of his personal world. This month, I’ve been enjoying that kind of extraordinary ride with Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a stranger to me until now.
His tone is conversational, his story compelling, and the Kenya-Uganda train that runs from the port of Mombasa across what was then called the White Highlands of Kenya, a constant presence, a symbol and reality both fearsome and alluring. Built by Indian labor, the railway was an important pathway for colonialism. We glimpse the tracks first in April of 1954 when Ngũgĩ’s older brother Good Wallace, who has joined the Mau Mau, flees the police. They remain a significant part of the landscape until 1954 when, after a rigorous academic exam, Ngũgĩ finally rides the train to Alliance High School, the best high school in Kenya – and ends his memoir.
Further reviews
Kevin O’Kelly in Boston.com:
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s memoir of growing up in British-ruled Kenya, “Dreams in a Time of War,’’ vividly evokes the colonial era as experienced by Africans, and the resulting clash of cultures that produced one of the most significant African writers of our time.
Set against the backdrop of World War II and the nation’s battle for independence, the work covers the period from Ngugi’s birth to his departure from his village for boarding school during his teens.
Marie Arana in The Washington Post:
Toward the end of his strikingly frank memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Barack Obama describes how his Kenyan grandfather came to marry his grandmother. A ruthless and demanding man, Hussein Onyango was so fussy about his hut that he rejected a number of wives because they weren’t tidy enough, beating them to within an inch of their lives and sending them back to their fathers. The first one he decided to keep was orderly enough, but, as it turned out, she could bear no children. During a night of drinking and revelry in a Nairobi dance hall, his masculinity was so ridiculed that he was prompted to take another wife — as was the country’s custom. He had a beautiful young woman abducted, negotiated a dowry with her father and brought her to live under his roof. This was the president’s grandmother, Akumu. Eventually, as “Dreams From My Father” tells it, Hussein Onyango brought yet a third wife into his hut, bestowing on Barack Obama Sr. an abundance of mothers. The pattern held into the next generation: Obama Sr., like his father, would also take three wives.
Book Details
Verdict: killer carrots
Local crime writers are painfully aware that they tread a self-immolating minefield of political correctness while they try to avoid racial stereotyping.
The good news, though, is that things are getting murkier and more real. Mike Nicol’s powerful second novel featuring black-and-white duo, Pylon Buso and Mace Bishop – former liberation struggle gun dealers, now in private security – depicts a South Africa where the running sores of ruthless cadre enrichment, state corruption, and casual violence causes even the tough guys to flinch.
Book Details
Verdict: carrot
SUMPTUOUS is exactly that from whichever angle you view it. A beautifully produced cookery book by Marlene van der Westhuizen with stunning photographs by Gerda Genis.
Van der Westhuizen shares her year between a small village in France, Charrox, and a studio in Cape Town. In both she teaches cookery.
Book Details
Verdict: carrot
It’s an extraordinary book by extraordinary writers about an extraordinary company. And if that sounds exaggerated and over the top, this is no ordinary book, because it needed to be something special to capture the miracle of what the Handspring Puppet Company represents and has achieved.
This is the first comprehensive account of their work in adult theatre and if you haven’t seen any of their productions, this book will allow a glimpse into their magical world.
For those who are familiar with this spectacular company’s offerings (whose latest achievement was winning an Olivier, London’s prestigious theatre awards, for the puppets created for War Horse) they will be reminded of their stupendous work over the years: from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Star Brites to Woyzek on the Highveld, their first collaboration with William Kentridge, followed by numerous other works, including the tantalising Tall Horse and now War Horse, which has won such high praise internationally.
Book Details
- Handspring Puppet Company (softcover) by Jane Taylor
EAN: 9780981432830
- Handspring Puppet Company (hardcover) edited by Jane Taylor
EAN: 9780981432854
Verdict: carrot
As a nature lover I spend a lot of time in game reserves. Hearing the lions at night is a magical sound and I can identify the fish eagle and a few other birds. However, I must admit that my birding knowledge is limited.
So a while back we played a CD as we drove home, and with the book in hand, we hoped that by the time we got home we would be able to identify many more birds.
Book Details
Uitspraak: wortel
Volgens Nancie Atwell, ’n bekende Amerikaanse onder wys kenner, lewe amper-tieners in twee wêrelde: Hul vingers klou nog aan die kindertyd, terwyl hul voete onverskrokke vorentoe na vroeë volwas sen heid stap.
Wie is dus die teikenlesers van ’n boek soos Dieter en Madame Zenobia? Die kind wat van ’n storieboek met helder kleurige prentjies sê, “Wow, dis cool,” of die kind (en dit kan dieselfde kind wees) wat uit die hoogte kyk na ’n boek wat só begin: “Dis tjoepstil in die saal. Nie een kind waag dit om te snuif of te hoes of hard asem te haal nie. Almal staar met groot oë na die hoof, meneer Du Plessis.”
Boekbesonderhede
Verdict: carrot
FOR some two decades Getaway Magazine has taken us on journeys to some of the most remote destinations on the planet allowing us, through the lenses of its cameras, to view these amazing places from the comfort of our homes.
The magazine set the benchmark for travel journalism in Africa and really opened the continent up for the average traveller to explore the land north of our borders.
Book Details
Uitspraak: wortel
Met sy jongste roman stel John Miles ’n hele paar uitdagings aan die leser.
Die ongewone vertelperspektief, ineengestrengelde verhaalgebeure, onderbrekings in die vertelling, samevloeiing tussen hede en verlede en vermenging van genres (soos die speur-, liefdes- en spanningsroman) is van die aspekte wat ’n tweede of selfs derde lees vereis.
Tog behoort voornemende lesers nie afgeskrik te word nie, maar moet eerder verheug wees oor ’n roman wat aktiewe en betrokke lesersdeelname verg – daar het sedert Agaat van Mar lene van Niekerk lanklaas ’n lywige roman verskyn wat so ’n ingewikkelde én genotvolle leeservaring vir prosaliefbebbers bied.
Boekbesonderhede
Verdict: carrot
A new publication from Zimbabwe’s Weaver Press, comprising “ten sharply polished stories”.
Something of a boom has occurred in the area of record making about this period of life in the country that has driven texts dealing in either fiction or fact, perhaps even propaganda, to the bookshelves. Judging by literary produce, it is a country that has become all things to all people.
To add to this treasure trove is Daniel Mandishona’s ‘White God, Black Demons’, an anthology of ten short stories published under the Weaver Press stable. Its magic is that it feels startlingly familiar, whatever your politics may be. Each portrait in the 110-page collection is the product of prodigious observation and research, that resembles a return to the 16th century Every (wo)man theatrical genre.
What a reader will cherish is that there is a kind of fidelity about the stories that leaves you knowing it to be true. The characters, and their experiences cut a little too close to the bone. Where else has there been an independent candidate who promises a ‘new dawn’ ahead of a presidential contest held in March, whose results are held back to April?
Book Details
Uitspraak: wortel
Die “kortetjies” in die titel is ’n stimulerende verskeidenheid van 66 vertellings, kort-kortverhale, geselsies, sketse en essays.
Die skrywer noem dit outobiografiese verdigsels, “bygelieg” deur hom.
Die vonds in die bundel is egter die “lange” – die kortverhaal Ons mond. In dié verhaal, oor sy oupa wie se groot geheim eers enkele dae voor sy dood aan die skrywer bekend word, lieg Du Plessis niks by nie.
Boekbesonderhede
