African Books - Page 7

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A treasure for everyone in the family."—Bill Cosby

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales is a cause for celebration, landmark work that gathers in one volume many of Africa's most cherished folktales. Mandela, a Nobel Laureate for Peace, has selected these thirty-two tales with the specific hope that Africa's oldest stories, as well as a few new ones, be perpetuated by future generations and be appreciated by children throughout the world.

In these "beloved stories, morsels rich with the gritty essence of Africa," we meet, among many others, a Kenyan lion named Simba, a snake with seven heads and a trickster from Zulu folklore; we hear the voices of the scheming hyena and learn from a Khoi fable how animals acquired their tails and horns. Several creation myths tell us how the land, its animals, and its people all came into existence under a punishing sun or against the backdrop of a spectacularly beautiful mountain landscape. Whether warning children about the dangers of disobedience or demonstrating that the underdog can—and often does—win, these stories, through their depiction of wise animals as well as evil monsters, are "universal in their portrayal of humanity, beasts, and the mystical."

What is particularly exciting about this book is that many of the stories, in their oral form, are almost as old as Africa itself. Most of them were, in fact, first told in various African tongues around evening fires in centuries past—tales from, for example, the San and the Khoi, the original hunter-gatherers and livestock herders of Southern Africa. Translated into English and other European languages chiefly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from their original languages—be they Karanga, Nguni, Xhosa, or one of many others—these folktales are a testament to the craft of storytelling and the power of myth.

Accompanied by dozens of enchanting, specially commissioned color paintings, Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales—culled from African countries as far-flung as Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya—presents a fountain of precious knowledge that will be treasured by children, as well as adults, for years to come.

Petals of Blood

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A tale of Post-Colonialism 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 23 people found this review helpful.

Set in Kenya but could be a prototype for a native culture anywhere colonized, breaking free, then globalized which is an extension of colonialism. It is easy to understand why the author was imprisoned after the book's publication in 1977 as he presents a bleak view of what the Kenyans got in the way of leaders after independence from the white rulers. The viewpoint here seems to be anyone "for the people" is assassinated, those that stay in power are stinking rich doing business with the former white rulers and selling out their own people.

The story opens with a brief introduction of the four main characters - Munira, Abdulla, Wanja and Karega - a triple murder has just taken place, 3 leading millionaire government officials of the city of Ilmorog were burned to death in their beds. We are then taken back twelve years in time to when Munira arrived in the sleepy, dusty village of Ilmorog to teach school, The four friends meet and we hear their individual stories, how they change over the years but more so how the place called Ilmorog changes, from a dusty village to a modern urban centre, and the effect on people who lived there for generations.

I found the book very dense reading at first, there so many African names introduced, also the style of writing with many flashback is challenging, but before page 100 I was sailing along and could hardly put the book down. There are many layers to this novel, it is a book about Africa, about the world history of black people in general, globalization, colonialism, and a murder mystery as well, the arsonist responsible for the triple murder is revealed to us by the end.

Editorial Review:

The puzzling murder of three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery sets the scene for this fervent, hard-hitting novel about disillusionment in independent Kenya. A deceptively simple tale, Petals of Blood is on the surface a suspenseful investigation of a spectacular triple murder in upcountry Kenya. Yet as the intertwined stories of the four suspects unfold, a devastating picture emerges of a modern third-world nation whose frustrated people feel their leaders have failed them time after time. First published in 1977, this novel was so explosive that its author was imprisoned without charges by the Kenyan government. His incarceration was so shocking that newspapers around the world called attention to the case, and protests were raised by human- rights groups, scholars, and writers, including James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Donald Barthelme, Harold Pinter, and Margaret Drabble.

Journey to Jo'burg: A South African story (Celebrate reading, Scott Foresman)

Beverley Naidoo

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Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Sweet & short story 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This was a quick read for myself and my two children, ages 11 & 13. I enjoyed it more than they did. It gives the reader an inside look at the effects apartheid had on a specific family.

Enjoy 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Even though I've never traveled as far as Africa, Beverly Naidoo, the author of Journey to Jo'burg, writes so descriptively that she transports me through the past to Johannesburg, South Africa in the time of 1881-1902. I feel like I am in connected to the characters because Beverly Naidoo reminds me that my African ancestors experienced the same intolerance, injustice, and tragedies in the Caribbean and here in America. In Journey to Jo'burg, you land in a town only 300 kilometers away from the historical Johannesburg and journey with a young girl named Naledi and Tiro, her brother. When Naledi's little sister gets sick she and her brother must journey to find their mother who works many miles from their house.
Naledi was my favorite character. Silent courage flowed through her. Though she stumbled, Naledi brought herself and Tiro, her young brother, through an experience that became their teacher. They had to deal with the enraged police, the mean bus drivers, and the rude Caucasians who pass helpless Africans by with occasional backwards glances of hatred. Naledi spoke fluidly of all this. Naledi remained firm and truthful and described her situation. She refused to pause because of the rough circumstances around her. The Caucasians believed that Africans should receive no rights and agreed with segregation. They also thought that Africans were 1/3 of a person, so the Africans were objects of constant ridicule. In spite of this, Naledi continued to describe her situation.
Along the way, Tiro discovers Mma's neighbor, Grace, who tells the tragic story of the "Horror Day" (my title for the day African students marched against the unfair laws) in 1976. Very few people explain the sorrow Africans experienced from that day on. On that day, students refused to be taught any more rubbish including how to be a servant and topics that did not involve their history. The police, enraged by the outburst, shot hundreds of children. One policeman targeted a girl right next to Grace and killed her. Another imprisoned her brother, Dumi. Finally, her brother was released and he studied in another, safer country. Grace made the story stand out because her words were strong and she seemed more determined than any other person to defeat racial intolerance and the other problems like that in her country.
Naledi and Tiro learn, flee, and search along the trip until they reach Johannesburg. There were no more rides or adventures. They are still excited however when they find Mma. They befriend the courageous and friendly Grace who raises their spirits into a land of eternal hope. She says hopeful things like, "We're pushed all over the place, but it won't be like that forever."
Journey to Johannesburg's character are fluid and express their feelings. Whether excited, fearful, sad, or depressed, the characters pull you through the books pages and shove their feelings into you. You are jumping up and down when they are hyper from excitement. For example, Mma shows her sadness or depression. She sighs and murmurs things like, "I must work. How else can I find the money to send you to school?" In addition, Grace was hopeful. She said once," We're pushed all over the place, but it won't be like that forever." Naledi was determined. She would say," We will get there! We have to go."
For me, I journeyed to Jo'burg through the entrance that is Beverly Naidoo's book. I felt the heart-break and longing of the gold miners and the servants when they yearned to learn more about their own history because a lot of African-American history is not taught in schools in America too.

The most important character is Naledi. She stands out determined and bold and ends up knowledgeable about her people's struggles. She stands between freedom and racial intolerant. She wants freedom and a once in a blue moon chance to discover the truth. Naledi is determined to learn her own heritage, not lessons about nations that don't concern her. Naledi seems to be another side of Beverly Naidoo, standing in her place and telling about experiences that are not taught in school. Naledi wants more out of life than how to be a servant.
The general theme of the story has to do with racial intolerance and the other problems that come with apartheid. However, it is buried deep in the layered "story soil". You have to read the story to understand the background. The author makes this historical fiction piece worth reading. The author spent much time to give a truthful description of Johannesburg and racial intolerance.
I believe that the characters' courage shine through which makes the story bright. Anyone who reads this book should be encouraged to stand up against racial intolerance. The characters pull you into the book. You have to read Journey to Johannesburg for yourself. Enjoy!

Editorial Review:

If only Mma was here, Naledi wished over and over. . .

Mma lives and works in Johannesburg, far from the village thirteen-year-old Naledi and her younger brother, Tiro, call home. When their baby sister suddenly becomes very sick, Naledi and Tiro know, deep down, that only one person can save her. Bravely, alone, they set off on a journey to find Mma and bring her back. It isn't until they reach the city that they come to understand the dangers of their country, and the painful struggle for freedom and dignity that is taking place all around them.

Hottentot Venus: A Novel

Barbara Chase-Riboud

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the bestselling author of Sally Hemings comes an extraordinary new novel based on the true story of Sarah Baartman, a South African herdswoman exhibited as a “scientific curiosity” in the capitals of nineteenth-century Europe.

Barbara Chase-Riboud’s previous historical novels won her critical praise and established her as a writer who daringly transforms the hidden truths of the past into compelling fiction. In Hottentot Venus, Chase-Riboud recounts the tragic life of Sarah Baartman, re-creating in vivid, shocking detail the racism and sexism at the heart of European imperialism.

Born in the colony of Good Hope, South Africa, in 1789, Sarah Baartman was taken to London at the age of twenty by an English surgeon, who promised her fame and fortune. Dubbed the “Hottentot Venus,” she was paraded naked in Piccadilly in a freak-show exhibition and subjected to the unabashed stares and crude comments of the British public, which resulted in a sensational trial for her custody by British abolitionists. Soon afterward, however, Baartman's keeper – who may have been her husband – sold her to a French circus owner. In 1814, her new owner took her to Paris as part of an exotic animal circus to be displayed to French high society. Baartman endured unconscionable exploitation and cruelty as medical experts and leading scientists touted her as an example of primitive evolution because of her genital “apron” and her prominent buttocks.

In an unforgettable saga that ranges from Capetown to St. Helena to London to Paris and back to Africa, Chase-Riboud has fashioned a Dickensian evocation of this icon of scientific racism, whose body, sex, and brain were exploited, examined, and dissected to become a synonym of ugliness and brutality — the absolute negation of European beauty, which even today taints our Western concepts of humanity. Sarah, the tragic heroine, evokes nineteenth-century novels of the “other” such as Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Nigger of the Narcissus.

In Hottentot Venus, Barbara Chase-Riboud evokes this strange and moving story in the voices of Baartman and her contemporaries, combining years of research with the sensitivity and perceptions of a masterful storyteller to bring the story to life. Like Chang and Eng and the author’s own Sally Hemings and Echo of Lions, HOTTENTOT VENUS is a powerful, stark portrayal of the harsh realities of race—a stunning look at the cruelty of curiosity, colonialism, and its twenty-first century consequences.

In the Heart of the Country: A Novel

J. M. Coetzee

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

An interesting look at craziness and colonialism 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful.

I just finished the seventh book I've read by the Nobel-prize-winning J.M. Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, which was published in 1977 and is his second novel (Dusklands was the first).

The 138-page book is presented as numbered entries (in a journal?) written by the main character, whose name we learn only once more than half the book has gone by. It is Magda. She is the intelligent, bitter, unattractive, spinster daughter of a sheep farmer in an isolated, nearly barren region of South Africa. A lead man on the farm, a black man named Hendrik, has gone home and brought back a wife, Anna, whom Magda's father takes as his mistress. Magda seems to snap and fantasizes violent reprisals against one or both of them, until the reader begins to wonder if some or any of it is real.

We only have Magda's apparently corrupted point of view to go by. There is no other point of reference in the work. Coeztee, who was educated as a computer scientist and a linguist, presents and represents incidents in the journal in different ways, disorienting the reader, but perhaps orienting one more to the world of perception that Magda inhabits. Coetzee will take a common point in time, and have Magda represent it a couple of different ways, with different outcomes, one of which may become part of her mythology/reality. For example, she seems to say she's an only child, but she might have had a brother and other siblings. By the end of the book, the other siblings are reality for her.

And by the end of the book, Magda has completely cracked up, if you ask me. One line I read about this book is that it is a feminine narrative a la Beckett. Coetzee, who seems to be influenced by Kafka, does present an existential image of life as a colonial presence in South Africa. The perception of Magda is her reality (as it is for all of us), she exists in a constant state of suffering and seems to have very little power over her world. The world in which she lives is cold to her, and she seems to snap a little when she sees that she cannot make the South African landscape and its culture/people yield to her will. Her (apparent) act of killing her father, hiding his body, and then, ultimately, staying on at the farm alone seems to be her wild and desperate attempt to enforce her meager power on the world. At one point, living in the house with the black servants (who previously had lived in their own small house on the grounds), Magda writes, "I cannot say whether Hendrik and Anna are guests or invaders or prisoners" (p. 112). One could say the same for her and her existence in Africa at all.

The last section of the book is the most difficult to get through, as Magda imagines that the planes that fly overhead are dropping language down to her, words in Spanish, her interpretations of those words and her responses. She says that the "words are Spanish, but they are tied to universal meanings" (p. 126). Again, we only have her retellings of these incidents to go by, and it's difficult to decipher what "really happened."

And that takes us to the issue that the book seems to be working on, how much really happens, and how much does language play a part in shaping our perceptions of what happened, what we tell ourselves about the world around us, and our role in it. How does language shape our reality? She writes, "I have also tried to ignore the nightly messages. One cannot pursue a hopeless infatuation. ... It is a world of words that creates a world of things. Pah!" (p. 134). (The italicized phrase represents what Magda thinks the people on the planes are saying to her.)

One single entry from this part of the novel reads simply, "How can I be deluded when I think so clearly?" (p. 126). I imagine any of us could ask ourselves that. Coetzee's linkage of linguistics, colonialism, literary devices and representation is a powerful, sometimes overwhelming and frustrating reading experience, but I recommend it. I certainly would love to know what others think of this odd, somewhat unsatisfying, but deeply provocative book!

Editorial Review:

A novel set in colonial South Africa, where a lonely sheepfarmer makes a bid for private salvation in the arms of a black concubine, while his daughter dreams of and executes a bloody revenge. From the author of DUSKLANDS and WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS.

The Confusions of Young Torless (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Robert Musil

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Reviewer In Search Of An Umlaut 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Young Torless was one of the orange Penguins I picked up on holiday. I must confess that I had not heard of the author, Robert Musil, but have since discovered that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize, Thomas Mann exclusively recommended his novel sequence The Man Without Qualities and this latter work is considered by some to be on a par with Joyce and Proust. The gaps in my knowledge are legion.

Written in 1909, this semi-autobiographical debut novel takes place at a military academy for young men, presumably somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When one student is discovered to be stealing from his fellow pupils he undergoes a series of tortures at the hands of two bullies, all of which is witnessed by our titular character Torless.

Torless himself never quite commits to joining the attacks, neither does he try to stop them. He finds himself both repulsed by the victim, Basini, but also strangely attracted to this pitiful character. This attraction, and the nature of the bullying, constantly teeters on the brink of homosexual love/rape and it is this element which adds real grit to the story.

The plot itself is fairly simple but the homosexual subtext is remarkably frank for a book written at the turn of the century. When the story is cracking along this is a most engaging and enlightening novel, however, Musil, through Torless, is prone to long bouts of philosophy within the prose and these, whilst integral to the narrative, do slow it down somewhat. Whether it be the writings of Kant or the mathematical problems presented by imaginary numbers, Torless does like to stare into space and ponder such matters for several pages at at a time.

My mind wandered during these sections and I found myself skim reading to the next chunk of actual plot but I suspect there are many who would appreciate both aspects of the novel. Plot-wise I was reminded more than once of Susan Hill's I'm the King of the Castle and certainly I would recommend this earlier work to fans of that book. I can't say that I am bubbling with enthusiasm to read The Man Without Qualities just yet but I will certainly be adding it to the list.

My copy was published in 1955 and translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. The currently available Penguin Classic, called The Confusions Of Young Torless, is a more recent translation by Shaun Whiteside and should be fairly easy to get hold of.

(Originally reviewed on the Me And My Big Mouth blog).

Editorial Review:

"Musil belongs in the company of Joyce, Proust, and Kafka." (The New Republic)

Like his contemporary and rival Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil boldly explored the dark, irrational undercurrents of humanity. The Confusions of Young Törless, published in 1906 while he was a student, uncovers the bullying, snobbery, and vicious homoerotic violence at an elite boys academy. Unsparingly honest in its depiction of the author's tangled feelings about his mother, other women, and male bonding, it also vividly illustrates the crisis of a whole society, where the breakdown of traditional values and the cult of pitiless masculine strength were soon to lead to the cataclysm of the First World War and the rise of fascism. A century later, Musil's first novel still retains its shocking, prophetic power.

The Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu: Rediscovering Africa's Literary Culture

Alida J. Boye, John O. Hunwick

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The extraordinary manuscripts of Timbuktu: invaluable historical documents, objects of tremendous beauty, and a testament to a great center of learning and civilization.

For centuries, trading caravans made epic journeys across the Saharan sands to reach the markets of the legendary city of Timbuktu, where they traded salt, gold, slaves, textiles—and books. By the mid-fifteenth century, Timbuktu had become a major center of Islamic literary culture and scholarship. The city's libraries were repositories of all the world's learning, housing not only works by Arab and Islamic writers but also volumes from the classical Greek and Roman worlds and studies by contemporary scholars.

The astonishing manuscripts of Timbuktu form the lavish visual heart of this book. Beautifully graphic, occasionally decorated, these exquisite artifacts reveal great craftsmanship as well as learning. All were written in the Arabic script, but not all are in Arabic, for they also feature a range of local African languages.

Aside from scholarly works, the surviving manuscripts include a wealth of correspondence between rulers, advisers, and merchants on subjects as various as taxation, commerce, marriage, divorce, adoption, breastfeeding, and prostitution, providing a vivid insight into the ordinary life and values of the day.

The Impostor: A Novel

Damon Galgut

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Damon Galgut is one of South Africa’s most exciting new literary voices. In The Impostor, his first novel since The Good Doctor, Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of postapartheid South Africa, a landscape being reshaped by new waves of money and power. Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother’s dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days, but whom Adam does not remember at all. But he plays along and, for a time, enjoys all that Canning has: a vast fortune and game preserve inherited from his father, and a beautiful, mysterious younger wife to whom Adam is compulsively, dangerously drawn. A spellbinding achievement from one of the defining members of a new generation of African writers, The Impostor evokes a glittering world in which the moneyed old guard, newly empowered black Africans, and shady foreign businessmen jockey for a piece of the new South African dream.

Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life

J. M. Coetzee

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Childhood through Coetzee's eyes 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Coetzee uses an unusual third-person narrative writing style, in this personal memoir of his childhood. This style however is cold and distant and reflects his up bringing. Coetzee an established South African, Cape Tonian born writer has won various literature prizes for his work.

Coetzee takes his reader on a journey through the sites and memories of his childhood. He successfully allows you into deep chambers of his mind as a youngster growing up in a small Afrikaans, South African housing estate during the Apartheid era. Readers venture through the experiences and emotions of the young Coetzee, growing up in a home with a white English mother and a white Afrikaans father. He pours out emotions of confusion and the feeling of alienation felt, growing up in an unconventional home of the day. The same of having an English tongue in and Afrikaans dominated school leaves Coetzee fearful of failure and exposure.

In his memoir we meet Coetzee's parents, who he feels very differently about. He comes across as being very close to his mother whom he both loved and resented for her constant motherly protection. In his home he and his mother seem to have the first and last say on all decisions, this making them the head of their home. This unconventional arrangement angers him yet he does not want to loose this power control he lacks respect for is father. He is ashamed of his father and how soft he is and views him as the weaker parent. He feels that the way he has been raised makes him abnormal in his society and grows up always feeling like an outsider looking in.

Coetzee's book is an easy but is not particularly entertaining read. If you are looking for light comic relief, riveting romance, mysterious twists or nail biting suspense this book will definitely not have you reading cover to cover longing for more.

Editorial Review:

Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, tormented by guilt and fear. With a father he despised, and a mother he both adored and resented, he led a double life--the brilliant and well-behaved student at school, the princely despot at home, always terrified of losing his mother's love. His first encounters with literature, the awakenings of sexual desire, and a growing awareness of apartheid left him with baffling questions; and only in his love of the high veld ("farms are places of freedom, of life") could he find a sense of belonging. Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for, but never could have expected.

Fire

Sebastian Junger

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Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A riveting collection of literary journalism by the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, capped off brilliantly by a new Afterword and a timely essay about war-torn Afghanistan -- a superb eyewitness report about the Taliban's defeat in Kabul -- new to book form.

Sebastian Junger has made a specialty of bringing to life the drama of nature and human nature. Few writers have been to so many disparate and desperate corners of the globe. Fewer still have met the standard of great journalism more consistently. None has provided more starkly memorable evocations of extreme events. From the murderous mechanics of the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, to an inferno forest fire burning out of control in the steep canyons of Idaho, to the forensics of genocide in Kosovo, this collection of Junger's reporting will take readers to places they need to know about but wouldn't dream of going on their own. In his company we travel to these places, pass through frightening checkpoints, actual and psychological, and come face-to-face with the truth.