We're going to Africa!
Hi Gang -- here are some choices for the next meeting in April or May. Thought it would be fun to go with a theme -- think of the restaurant possibilities! Take a look at the following (they're listed in no particular order) and cast your vote!Thanks,
Roberta
Booktrip to Africa
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller by Judith Thurman
495 pages (yikes); winner of the National Book Award
Judith Thurman's biography of Karen Blixen, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, is a satisfying work. Well researched, sympathetic, fair and imaginative, it tells the story of an enigmatic and at times infuriating woman, a distinguished writer who also led an extremely interesting and varied life, spanning two continents and more than two cultures. An excellent subject, it is treated here with the respect and attention that it deserves and with the impartiality that time and the author's intelligence have made possible. Karen Blixen died in 1962; here, 20 years later, she emerges from myth and anecdote and partisan emotion as a major figure but mysterious to the last. Witch, sibyl, lion hunter, coffee planter, aristocrat and despot, a paradox in herself and a creator of paradoxes, a desperately sick but indestructible woman, she steps forth from these pages with all the force of legend and all the human detail and frailty of a real person made by real circumstance. This, like the best biographies, is a book in which the reader can live, and which, despite its wealth of insight, leaves final judgments to the reader. It is a fine achievement.
For the rest of the New York Times review: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E1D81439F937A25752C1A964948260
My Son's Story by Nadine Gordimer
277 pages; winner of Nobel Prize
Gordimer's new novel, about a colored South African family ravaged by the father's affair with a white human rights advocate, probes with breathtaking power and precision the complexities of "love, love/hate," and the interplay of public and private reality. First-person narration shows son Will's struggle to deal with confusion and bitterness after discovering father Sonny's infidelity; alternating third-person sequences depict Sonny's evolution from a committed schoolteacher and devoted husband/father into a resistance worker for whom the movement itself ultimately becomes a second family--one his loyal wife Aila cannot share with him, though his lover Hannah does. The book's richness of sensation and consciousness is such that Gordimer's eloquence is, at times, almost unbearable. Always, though, she retains perfect control over her material, rendering her characters' shifting perspectives with truly extraordinary empathy and discernment. Highly recommended.
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
320 pages
The most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, "We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony." Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.
posted by Bhawna Paul @ 12:36 PM
1 Comments:
Would also recommend 'The Power of One' by Bryce Courtenay and the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith for a wonderful view of Africa...
Post a Comment
<< Home