THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

We Are The Poors: Community Struggles In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Ashwin Desai

2008-08-20T03:30:00.002-07:00

The Memoirs Of A Survivor, Doris Lessing

2008-08-20T03:30:00.001-07:00

God's Bits Of Wood, Sembene Ousmane

2008-08-20T03:28:00.002-07:00

A Continent For The Taking, Howard French

2008-08-20T03:28:00.001-07:00

The Hottentot Venus, Rachel Holmes

2008-08-20T03:27:00.002-07:00

Maru, Bessie Head

2008-08-20T03:27:00.001-07:00

Africa In History, Basil Davidson

2008-08-20T03:26:00.000-07:00

African Film, Joseph Gugler

2008-06-28T06:11:00.000-07:00

So Long A Letter, Mariama Ba

2008-06-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

Beasts Of No Nation, Uzodinma Iweala

2008-06-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

Crimes Against Humanity, Geoffrey Robertson

2008-06-20T02:18:00.001-07:00

Globalizing Rights, ed Matthew Gibney

2008-06-20T02:15:00.000-07:00

The Lammas Hireling, Ian Duhig

2008-06-20T02:14:00.000-07:00

Obedience, Struggle & Revolt, David Hare

2008-06-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

Maru, Bessie Head

2008-06-20T02:12:00.001-07:00

The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

2008-06-20T02:10:00.000-07:00

The Ordeal Of The African Writer, Charles Larson

2008-06-20T02:09:00.000-07:00

God Is Dead, Ron Currie Jr

2008-05-28T06:56:00.001-07:00

The Gathering, Anne Enright

2008-05-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Violence, Slavoj Zizek

2008-05-28T06:51:00.001-07:00

Dreams Of Peace And Freedom, Jay Winter

2008-05-28T06:50:00.003-07:00

Resistance Literature, Barbara Harlow

2008-05-28T06:50:00.001-07:00

Selected Poems Of Louis MacNeice

2008-05-12T02:49:00.001-07:00

Global Shadows: Africa In The Neoliberal World Order, James Ferguson

2008-05-12T02:46:00.001-07:00

The Wretched Of The Earth, Frantz Fanon

2008-05-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

On The Political, Chantal Mouffe

2008-05-12T02:41:00.000-07:00

Home And Exile, Chinua Achebe

2008-04-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

Links, Nuruddin Farah

2008-04-08T04:08:00.001-07:00

Brothers Under The Skin: Travels In Tyranny, Christopher Hope

2008-03-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

God Dies By The Nile, Nawal El Sadaawi

2008-03-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

Climate Of Fear, Wole Soyinka

2008-03-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

Woza Albert!, Percy Mtwa/Mbongeni Ngema/Barney Simon

2008-03-26T07:27:00.001-07:00

The Bondage Of Fear, Fergal Keane

2008-03-26T07:26:00.001-07:00

Elizabeth Costello, JM Coetzee

2008-03-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

In Theory, Aijaz Ahmad

2008-03-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

Culture & Imperialism, Edward Said

2008-03-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

No-one Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July

2008-03-19T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Story Of Lucy Gault, William Trevor

2008-03-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

Sleepwalking Land, Mia Couto

2008-03-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Mating Birds, Lewis Nkosi

2008-03-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

Desert Divers, Sven Lindqvist

2008-02-18T01:50:00.000-08:00

The Earth And Sky Of Jacques Dorme, Andrei Makine

2008-02-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

A Game As old As Empire, edited by Steven Hiatt

2008-02-06T15:25:00.000-08:00

Music Is The Weapon Of The Future, Frank Tenaille

2008-02-06T15:01:00.000-08:00

How To Lie With Maps, Mark Monmonier

2008-02-06T14:59:00.001-08:00

My Mother City, Gerald Dawe

2008-02-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

One Day In June, compiled by Sisa Ndaba

2008-02-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

Waiting For An Angel, Helon Habila

2008-02-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

The Mask Of Art, Clyde Taylor

2008-02-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote, Ahmadou Kourouma

2008-02-06T14:48:00.002-08:00

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

2008-02-06T14:48:00.001-08:00

Exterminate All The Brutes, Sven Lindqvist

2008-02-06T14:44:00.000-08:00

Allah Is Not Obliged, Ahmadou Kourouma

2008-02-06T14:42:00.000-08:00

Mine Boy, Peter Abrahams

2008-02-06T14:40:00.000-08:00

July's People, Nadine Gordimer

2008-02-06T14:38:00.001-08:00

Under African Skies, compiled by Charles Larson

2008-02-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

The Writer's Voice, Al Alvarez

2008-02-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

1968, Mark Kurlansky

2008-02-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

I Write What I Like, Steve Biko

2008-02-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

A Grain Of Wheat, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

2008-02-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

The Book Of Evidence, John Banville

2008-02-06T14:26:00.001-08:00

On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan

2007-11-22T06:45:00.001-08:00

I want to say I liked this more than I think I did. Very readable, as McEwan almost always is, I finished it in an afternoon. Ostensibly the story of a young couple's wedding night, its effect is almost that of a parable, a warning. What is said, or not said, can shape the course of an entire life. Ultimately it did not convince me as the characters did not convince; they felt like very well constructed stereotypes. In the end I did not really feel the tragedy, at least not for the characters themselves; only with the selfish insertion of myself into the story could I feel something.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy

2007-11-22T06:44:00.003-08:00

A friend in a hostel passed this on to me. Eileen, I am forever grateful. An astonishing, harrowing, gripping account of a post-apocalyptic America; two people, a man and his son, are traveling along a road, trying to reach the coast. The landscape is ravaged, sunk under ash, everything dead. Food, clothing, shelter, all are gone, must be scavenged. What emerges is a simple yet stunningly powerful story of humanity and its demise, of what is left after the worst happens. McCarthy's use of language is wonderful; spare, stark imagery, dialogue torn from its roots. Brilliant.

The Mind Of South Africa, Allister Sparks

2007-11-22T06:44:00.001-08:00

A superb introduction to South African history, from before Van Riebeek arrived at the Cape to 1989, Sparks (a former journalist/editor) handles an enormous amount of historical and poltical material with deftness and a keen eye for the narrative. It is a remarkable feat to make so much information so manageable, and his personal commitment to justice and the transformation of society comes across naturally. The timing of the book, published just before the remarkable events of the early 1990's, also gives a real sense of time and place; his comments about what will happen next, with the benefit of hindsight, are even more interesting.

Guerra, Jason Webster

2007-11-22T06:43:00.002-08:00

This is the second book on the contemporary Spanish situation in light of the increasing conversation about the Civil War and Franco which I have read recently. It compliments Tremlett's book superbly, although this is more concise, better told, superbly written and emotionally engaging, asking the necessary questions with just the right balance of delicacy and force.

A World Of Strangers, Nadine Gordimer

2007-11-22T06:43:00.001-08:00

Gordimer is unmissable; she tells stories, and tells them so well, which such intuition, they have the power to move one from here to there, to evoke a genuine gasp, the feeling of stumbling into something new. This novel traces the experience of a young English guy arriving in South Africa in the late fifties to work for his family company. His social life is divided between the moneyed, leisurely English whites and his streetwise, politically aware black friends from Soweto; never do the lives meet, or intertwine. His friendship with a young African, Stephen Sithole, becomes the crux, the focus. I do not want to give away the ending. Read it.

The Smell Of Apples, Mark Behr

2007-11-22T06:42:00.002-08:00

Behr's novel is extraordinary in its subtlety. The story of an Afrikaans family from the Cape in South Africa, Behr's brilliance lies in his deftness at showing the contradictions, the good, godly family steeped in a devilish mindset; there are no bared teeth, few raised fists. The daughter, at one point, even receives a beating from her father for insulting a black person, further confusing the picture and highlighting the strange and self-deceiving nature of the apartheid ideology and theology. This is a superb portrayal of how the apartheid idea worked out in simple family life, and how everything meshed together in a chilling, smiling facade.

Nonviolence: The History Of A Dangerous Idea, Mark Kurlansky

2007-11-22T06:42:00.001-08:00

A little social history of non-violence. Overly focused on Europe and, even more so, America, this is a passionate, if not entirely convincing, introduction. Too much, however, goes unexamined, and insufficient attention is paid to historical instances (not just the second world war) where violence of some description seems to be the only option, or was felt to be so by certain groups. No persuasive critique is made of the thinking, for example, of the ANC's approach in South Africa, which felt after years of making no headway by peaceful means, resorted at last to selective violence.

Inventing God, Nicholas Mosley

2007-11-22T06:41:00.004-08:00

I expected so much more from this. Novels of ideas sometimes miss me; if the characters are merely vessels of the ideas they are expressing I feel cheated. This book felt very much like that to me, although there were moments of illumination. Essentially exploring the idea of God as a necessary fiction (if God did not exist we would have to invent him...), set against the context of the conflict in Palestine/Lebanon, the novel focuses on a variety of people's reactions to the potential development of a weapon which can be genetically selective (ie can be trained on an entire population, but only kill those of a particular genetic grouping). The characters, as I mentioned, feel overwrought, unrealistic. And many of the ideas seem only partly engaged; one is left, by the end, feeling let down.

Bay Of Tigers, Pedro Rosa Mendes

2007-11-22T06:41:00.003-08:00

Mendes is one of those journalists I imagine looks like Che Guevara; on reading the first few pages of Bay Of Tigers, I sensed frustratingly it was a deliberate dress code. Nevertheless, the tone moves into a more relaxed, less self-conscious style, and the accounts of his (mindblowingly dangerous) experiences in Angola and Mozambique throughout the wars of the eighties and nineties, mingled with fascinating and well-told histories from early Portuguese times through to the present leave an indelible mark.

African Laughter, Doris Lessing

2007-11-22T06:41:00.001-08:00

The recent Nobel winner, Lessing's account of a number of visits to Zimbabwe (where she grew up) in the eighties and nineties is wonderfully written, eschewing easy criticism and sentimental reminiscing. There are wonderful passages about her childhood, and a sharp eye for the contemporary politics (this was written long before Mugabe's recent head staggers), conveying a sense of attachment; it really feels, on finishing, that you know something about Zimbabwe.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

2007-11-22T06:40:00.001-08:00

There are some books which can be read twice, and then there are some which demand it. Winterson's Oranges knocked me about like a gentle boxer the first time I read it, maybe three of four years ago; this second time there was more hugging and less pugilism, but it still left me on the canvas. The power of the story is in the telling, the turn of phrase, the inevitability. I knew what was coming, and longed for it all the more. A brilliant coming of age story which is so much more. Sex and religion, does it get any better?

Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux

2007-11-22T06:38:00.000-08:00

Even Theorux's cynicism can't detract from a very readable account of traveling overland from Cairo to the Cape.

Parallels & Paradoxes: Explorations In Music & Society, Daniel Barenboim & Edward Said

2007-11-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race Tribe & Power In The Heart Of Africa, Bill Berkeley

2007-09-07T03:37:00.000-07:00

I've been reading, fairly steadily, about Africa for the past 8 months. This is the most perceptive, engaged, fascinating, and promising book I've read so far. Berkeley traveled in Africa as a journalist, reporting from conflict zones throughout the continent throughout the eighties and nineties. What sets him apart from most western journalism i have come across on Africa is his refusal to be lazy, to settle for the old simple pat answers to questions of conflict. 'Age old ethnic animosities', 'tribal differences', phrases common to so much reporting of African conflict in the last thirty years - Berkeley argues strongly (wars, atrocities and the reasons for them is the subject of his book) that these are misleading reductions, that behind all virtually all of Africa's troubled history in recent years lies a small number of powerful men (and very occasionally, women) orchestrating events and creating and exacerbating divides. Much of African history has shown that tribes can coexist peacefully; however, in a situation where the rule of law has disappeared there is no recourse for any individual or group to justice, tyranny and anarchy are bound to fill the gap, especially when there are people who can benefit from such an arrangement. Berkeley expertly shows how African tyrants have done this for much of Africa's independence; but also the political climate and structures (or lack thereof) that allowed them to do this, were created, deliberately, during the colonial period, when virtually all the colonial powers used the tactic of divide and rule (isolating a minority grouping and investing them with the machinery of power to manage the rest of the population, thus stoking up tribal animosity and creating situations of dependency certain to cause future problems). These potential problematics were increased many times over by the superpowers' approach to Africa in the seventies and eighties, when they adopted the mantra 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend', the US and Russia and China arming and supporting dictators who would side with them in the cold war regardless of how they treated their citizens; this, inevitably, further undermined the rule of law for countless African citizens, many of whom became the cannon fodder for these heavily armed and financed dictators to maintain their grip on power. Indeed, the tactics used by many of these tyrants, from Samuel Doe in Liberia, Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo, Idi Amin in Uganda, Turabi in the Sudan, among plenty of others, were adopted straight from their colonial predecessors.

Berkeley's great success in this book, aside from the high quality of the writing itself, and the engaging blend of storytelling and analysis which works so well, is his tying together the colonial legacy with the recent African past, without easily leveling blame in either direction. He has also, clearly, listened more to Africans than to western commentators and politicians, a trait not often found. He is not naive enough to be prescriptive about solutions for the future; he emphasizes the need for western governments to support movements within Africa to bolster the rule of law, accountability, a free press. Africans have been deprived of these things for a very long time, and have paid the price for the callousness of both their leaders and the western governments who at best watched on, at worst actively sponsored them.

North Of South, Shiva Naipaul

2007-09-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

There is cynical, and there is cynical. In the late seventies, Shiva Naipaul (late brother of the celebrated novelist V.S.) traveled to and in East Africa, notably Kenya, Zambia and Tanzania, to discover how the highly lauded (both in Africa and worldwide) socialist projects of Kenyatta and Nyerere were being experienced 'on the ground' ie by the people themselves. He finds disorganisation, a lack of clarity about what is supposed to be being achieved, and general mayhem and disorder. It is by no means a startling discovery, and his tendency to find fault is highly engaged throughout, sometimes to the point of frustration for the reader; nevertheless the writing is superb, and he is a great storyteller. Naipaul's background as an Asian who grew up in Trinidad also allows him a fascinating insight into the various shades racism takes in Africa, and his refusal to accept any ideology means his critique is equally applied to each situation he meets.

Hell Fire, Nick Tosches

2007-08-28T04:55:00.000-07:00

An extraordinary biography of an extraordinary man, this is one of the most captivating books i've read in ages. The story of Jerry Lee Lewis, rock'n'roll and eventually country music star - swinging between fervent fundamental pentecostalism and a life of drink, drugs and guns, the book deftly and poetically charts the rise and fall and rise and fall and, you get the idea, of this incredible man. Rolling Stone described it as 'quite simply the best rock and roll biography ever written.' It would be hard to disagree.

Arrest the Music!: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics

2007-08-14T01:39:00.002-07:00

Vertigo, W G Sebald

2007-08-14T01:39:00.001-07:00

Sebald doing what Sebald does - surely one of the best and most original European voices of the last thirty years, Vertigo blends travel narrative with social history with fiction with philosophy, and without getting stuck up its own arse.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers

2007-08-14T01:37:00.000-07:00

A moving, sad portrait of a small town in the deep south of America early in the twentieth century. An array of isolated, fiery characters find themselves inexplicably drawn to a deaf mute Jew called Singer. The story is remarkable in its lack of pretension, it's refusal to allow easy relationships to develop lazily; none of the characters really move towards resolution, and in the end it amounts to a story of loss, which i guess, if you hang around long enough, is what all stories amount to. McCullers wrote this when she was 23. Her insight is a wonder, and her refusal to let her compassion, which is evident, crowd out the simple existential loneliness of her characters is the gain of the reader.

Go Tell It On The Mountain, James Baldwin

2007-08-14T01:36:00.000-07:00

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society and an Early Cry for Civil Rights, Hilton Als and David Margolick

2007-08-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

Empire of the Mind: A Journey Through Great Britain, Iqbal Ahmed

2007-06-16T05:40:00.001-07:00

An intriguing little book about Britain written by a Kashmiri immigrant who moves to London and travels to a variety of cities and towns in search of the imperial country he had imagined growing up. It is as full of Ahmed as it is of Britian, a reminder that wherever we are in the world we only have our own eyes, and temperament, to see with.

The Heart Of The Matter, Graham Greene

2007-06-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

It is hard to be too complementary about this book - I have never read Graham Greene before, shamefully, and I feel I have missed something for a long time. This is one of the most insightful, crafted, startling books about the human condition, and in some ways about being a man, that i have ever read. Set in an unnamed West African country it is the story of Scobie, an English police officer, an unrelentingly honest and scrupulous individual among a self-interested throng. The colonial setting is heavy throughout, although it acts i feel more as a spine on which the human stories are played out. Indeed a postcolonial critique may not serve the book all that well; Greene gives little voice to local people and while he shows the idiocy of the stereotypes which the colonialists invent, he never really gets behind them. However I think such a reading ill serves Greene's purpose, which is much more an examination of the manners and mores of a responsible man whose internal passions and struggles are repressed in the cause of what he believes, or seems to believe, is most important. The thin line between love and pity, a recurring theme for Greene here, is explored and exposed brilliantly.

The Shackled Continent, Robert Guest / New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance, Charlayne Hunter-Gault

2007-06-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

I read these two books together, deliberately - Guest's is, as the title suggests, a critical (and often harsh) appraisal of where Africa now is after 50 years of independence, whereas Gault's is, or purports to be, a more upbeat, optimistic account of all the good things happening in Africa which bode well for the future of the continent.

I read Guest's first - a writer for the Economist magazine, his reporting and analysis is astute, reasoned, and in depth. His conclusions are understandable, and well presented; Africa's main problem, which continues (though potentially to a lesser extent now than even ten years ago) is mismanagement. Political and economic decisions have been made which have turned a once rich continent (in terms of natural resources) into the poorest in the world by a long way - continued failure to invest in infrastructure, to open trade, and so on, threatens to maintain this situation. There are very practial and pragmatic steps he suggests, can help, the most striking of which for me was the enshrining in law of the capitalist principle of private property ie. the right to own things. He shows effectively how impossible it is for any kind of economic growth to occur when both foreign investors have no confidence that their investment in a country is safe from the hands of government whim, and local entrepreneurs are unable to raise capital on property because that property is not 'solid' enough to be used as collateral for lending institutions. Such a situation inevitably stagnates an economy, and has been seen in many places throughout Africa; it is not unremarkable that Mugabe in the last month has been pressing for a change in Zimbabwean law to allow the state to take (read 'steal') majority shares in any foreign owned business. Who would invest in Zimbabwe under such conditions?

Guest's major blind spot, I feel, is his absolute embracing of capitalism as Africa's saviour, without a trenchent enough critique of Western meddling. It is not that he doesn't mention this; he is extremely critical of this, and certainly does not land all of Africa's economic problems at its own door. In his suggestion that Africa must open its borders to trade with the West, he points out extremely well the danger inherent in doing so ie. protectionism in Western countries means that even if, for example, grain can be grown in Nigeria at half the price of America, due to subsidies paid to American farmers not only will American grain still potentially be cheaper, but excess American grain can then be dumped onto African markets, further devaluing the price received by the Nigerians. He shows how this is both unfair and a burden not only to the Nigerian farmer but to the Western taxpayer, who is paying considerably more for his or her grain due to the extraordinary amounts farmers get subsidised by in America and Europe. Nevertheless, he gives no adequate explanation for how this is likely to change; therefore he encourages, it seems, African countries to engage in trade in a way which is, pragmatically speaking, impossibly idealistic. This is, it should be noted, an important point for fair trade campaigners - the confusion of fair trade and organic and locally grown produce campaigns should not be ignored; if we campaign for locally grown and organic produce, which will often require subsidies for local farmers working in such markets, we are in great danger of ensuring that poorer farmers in the third world cannot afford to trade their produce with us.

Gault's book is a frustration from start to finish. There is an extraordinary amount of time given to talking about herself, and while it purports to tell of great new developments in Africa, nothing is said that Guest does not mention in more depth and with greater analysis. Her main reference point is South Africa where she seems to have most experience, and it is refreshing to hear the positive stories she tells. Nevertheless, it is unfair (and untrue) to suggest, as she seems to do at times, that she is the first or only person telling these good stories. Not only that, but some of good stories she tells are considerably more problematic than she suggests. Affirmative Action programs in South Africa have gone some way to addressing racial discrimination and imbalance; but there are still significant economic problems involved in giving jobs to people less qualified and capable because of their race. I am not suggesting that the idea is wrong necessarily, and context must play a strong role in such discussions; but Gault does not effectively engage with this discussion at all, flagging up only the good points. Ironically indeed, in the section in which she mentions the other great thing to be happening in Africa at present, the freeing up of the media, she spends a startling amount of time highlighting how there are many, many cases throughout Africa where the media is not free, and has been used right up to the present day to manipulate opinion and even precipitate massacres and ethnic cleansing. Then, however, she again criticizes people who talk about Africa in this way.

It is a strange book, in truth, with a few pertinent observations but ultimately no compelling argument. Nevertheless, it was good to read it in conjunction with Guest's - both were written in the last 3 years or so, and are invaluable reading for anyone trying to get an outsider's sense of where Africa is at right now.

Skating To Antarctica, Jenny Diski

2007-05-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

Memoirs can be hard going. The weight of all that self-obsession, especially if you don't know who the person is, can drag a man down. I had never heard of Diski, though apparently she has written a number of novels. I stumbled across this little book in a second hand shop in Edinburgh, on a hunting trawl for travelogues. And I'm glad I did.
This is simply beautiful. Diski uses her trip to the Antarctic, to the whiteness and the nothingness, as both recountable story and metaphor. As a travel writer she is funny, honest and observant; when writing the story of her own, remarkable life, she is candid but reserved (is that possible?), and self-deprecatingly self-aware. She is also a brilliant writer, with a lightness of touch and prose which carries a lot but feels light, surely one of the best gifts a writer can hold. I really, thoroughly enjoyed this, and, putting my credit card where my mouth is, have just ordered another of her books, 'On Trying To Keep Still.'

An Acre Of Barren Ground, Jeremy Gavron

2007-05-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

Part social history, part fiction, Gavron's book is a beautiful creative engagement with Brick Lane in London, the city's longest (at one time anyway) street, and surely one of the most fascinatingly diverse. Gavron's research is simply astonishing, and melded with his propensity for telling a good story, this book weaves the lives of Jewish immigrants, English soldiers, second generation Bangladeshi teenagers, middle-aged vicars, and prehistoric farmers (to pick a small sample) into an extraordinary whole. It reminded me (in its idea much more than scope, for this is far more extensive, despite its readability) of Belfast writer Glenn Patterson's superb 'No. 5', a fictional account of a house built in Belfast in the fifties and the people who live there over the years.

Letters To A Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens

2007-05-12T06:04:00.001-07:00

Taking Rilke's 'Letters To A Young Poet' as his blueprint, Hitchens has written an accessible and engaging personal account of an activist/critic's role in the world. 'Activist/critic' may indeed be misleading - this is not a job, not a way of making a living, as Hitchens is at pains to point out; it is what you are, not what you do. This is a superb book, articulating with wit and honesty the difficulty and necessity of living with integrity and with a passion for humanity; which translates, in this time as much as any other, to a passion for change. He argues for argument, for disputation, seeing consensus both in terms of personal discussion and politics as a misleading and fairly useless form. It is a refreshing call to political and social engagement, free from the despondency which threatens the whole ship with going down.

From the final letter:
"The high ambition, therefore, seems to me to be this: That one should strive to combine the maximum of impatience with the maximum of skepticism, the maximum of hatred of injustice and irrationality with the maximum of ironic self-criticism. This would mean really deciding to learn from history rather than invoking or sloganising it."

And discuss:
"So I have no peroration or clarion note on which to close. Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the "transcendent" and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."

Fantastic Invasion, Patrick Marnham

2007-05-06T05:58:00.000-07:00

Strikingly different from the previous book I reviewed, Marnham's take on recent African history is personal and almost universally belligerent. He is critical of something, or someone, on more or less every page, and while he undoubtedly makes many interesting points, it threatens to become tiresome at times. You feel, as you read, that you are learning as least as much about Marnham's personality as about Africa. And this seems strange, as it is hard to gauge just how much time Marnham has spent in Africa; he writes as though from personal experience, although is never very explicit about his own place within the stories he tells. His admonishing of the former colonial powers for their messing and meddling, both during occupation and subsequently (often disguised, he feels, in the language of 'development') is blunt and devastating. It does feel, however, that he oversteps the limits of his own wisdom at times. I was reading an article in the Independent, for example, just a couple of days ago that suggests that biodiversity and the maintenance of species is crucial in the fight against climate change. Yet Marnham, admittedly writing over 20 years ago, mocks many of the efforts being made to this end in Africa. There are moments too when he threatens to fall into some of his own traps; he criticizes the patronizing approach of much of the colonial engagements with the continent, but in relativising, for example, the system of bribery and corruption in Nigeria as merely a cultural way of doing things, comes very close to implying that honesty is simply a western imposition on a culture that does not place a particularly high value on it. I am not entirely convinced that every Nigerian would necessarily agree, and feel in my (undoubtedly limited) knowledge of things that it was a small elite that tended to benefit from this 'cultural system'.

Nevertheless, Fantastic Invasions is an engaging and interesting read, and some of the stories will stick with me for a very long time, not least the situation of a lawyer in Zanzibar both prosecuting a number of alleged conspirators against the government while simultaneously representing them as defence counsel. One day he would be pushing for the death penalty, the next, in the same court but standing on the other side, arguing for their release.

The State Of Africa, Martin Meredith

2007-05-05T03:51:00.000-07:00

It's nigh-on impossible to write a history of Africa in the last fifty years; there are over fifty countries, and each has its own story, its own set of situations to unfurl and make sense of. To Meredith's credit he makes a remarkably impressive job of this, being as selective as is necessary for such a project, but still communicating an extraordinary amount of information in a very accessible way. His brush strokes are neither too broad nor too thin, though brush strokes they remain; he is well aware himself that in 700 pages it would be ridiculous to claim completeness. Nevertheless, his blend of storytelling and analysis is refreshing and astute; he falls for neither of the dangers of blaming Africa's current ills on EITHER the former colonial powers or the newly independent states, demonstrating the complicity of both in reducing the continent to its current predicament. He is withering in his critique, especially, of the 'big men', the dictators who rose up in the seventies and eighties throughout Africa and dominated their countries' political systems, almost universally to the detriment of their economies and citizens.
As an introduction to post-colonial Africa this is simply a superb, engaging read. I just wonder what, given the current challenges facing African leaders, a history of the next fifty years will look like.

Landing Light, Don Paterson

2007-04-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

I can't really say why, but this is brilliant. His poems somehow seem just beyond reach in some way, and yet leave traces that dig away inside you. I'll return to this book again, no doubt.

Ghosts Of Spain: Travels Through A Country's Hidden Past, Giles Tremlett

2007-04-23T05:29:00.000-07:00

I'm getting into the habit of reading travelogues at the moment, with one eye on the African jaunt coming up in October. Giles Tremlett's 'Ghosts Of Spain' caught my eye in a Waterstone's browsing session a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I'd have a look. Tremlett is an English journalist based in Madrid; his love for Spain and the Spanish is evident throughout the book, which explores life in contemporary Spain, the last country in Western Europe to leave behind fascism and dictatorship. Franco died only in 1975, and while Spain now looks very different, Tremlett pokes at the veneer enough to show a country still coming to terms, or occasionally refusing to come to terms, with its past. The book is fairly well written, although it reads very much like journalism at times. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though at times is can prove hard going. His exploration of the separatist tendencies within Spain (in the Basque country and Catalonia) are fascinating, especially to an outsider like myself who knows very little. The seeming move within contemporary Spain towards a federal system (Catalonia's new constitution recognises it as a nation, although only partially), demands attention, and provides an interesting and ongoing case study of the problems of defining nationality and identity.

A Man Of The People, Chinua Achebe

2007-04-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

Chinua Achebe wrote A Man Of The People in 1966, in the early, heady days of Nigerian independence. Within a few years of gaining its freedom Nigeria was rife with political manipulation and mismanagement (for a number of reasons which i'll talk about in more detail later in my thoughts on The Fate Of Africa by Martin Meredith). Achebe's brilliance lies in both his boldness in tackling this situation head on (not an easy or very safe pursuit), and in the way he weaves stories of personal love affairs, jealousies and greed into the wider political landscape. A Man Of The People is funny, sad and gripping - it gives the lie to the simplistic understanding of postcolonial politics often iterated by former colonial powers ("If only we'd stayed it would all be fine" - much of the political landscape into which these manipulative, self-interested politicians stepped so easily was set up by the English, French, Portuguese), but also the claims of certain African critics who would like to blame everything on the 'white man'. The awareness of the inherent complexity of politics and society is difficult to get to grips with, never mind explain. Again fiction, in Achebe's hands, manages something that may otherwise be impossible.

Notes From A Turkish Whorehouse, Philip Ó Ceallaigh

2007-04-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

I am not one of those to hanker after an imaginary past in which fiction really had something to say. I am at home in the world of new books as much as of the classics, praise be to waterstones. Most of my favourite books have been written in the last one hundred years, and a fair few in the last ten. Nevertheless, it is rare to stumble across a book, and a writer, which carries within itself a sense of timelessness, the awareness, albeit subtle and untrumpeted, that it is already a classic. Notes From A Turkish Whorehouse is such a book, and Ó Ceallaigh is such a writer. It's his first book, a collection of short stories peppered throughout Europe (and occasionally outside), grown almost without exception from a single seed - men's inability to love women. Ó Ceallaigh is Irish but lives in Bucharest, and the inherent dislocation provides a unique backdrop to stories of men and women falling at the edges. This is Carver territory, although differently handled, and rooted firmly in the present day. The characters convince, and hurt; I laughed out loud, cried, winced and cringed at various points; perhaps don't read it in a cafe (not least if you don't want to explain repeatedly to bemused customers that, no, it's neither a self-help book nor travel guide...). Such stories as these can be borne only out of a unique blend of experience and observation rarely found in literature new or old; and what makes it all the more powerful, as in Carver, is its lack of pretension, its unassumingness. Read it.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor

2007-04-01T02:44:00.000-07:00

I read 'Wise Blood' quite a few years ago, and felt it was about time I returned to the deep south. O'Connor writes of the fringes of America, people who have fallen off the edge of the American dream. Her characters have been likened to those that obsessed photographer Diane Arbus: the freaks, the strange. This may be too simplistic an analysis, for O'Connor's great ability, which is unnerving for the reader, is the absolute refusal to sit in judgement. Many of her characters are self-obsessed, greedy, manipulative, narrow-minded, and yet there is no foothold within the narrative for the reader to stand up and feel self-righteous, at least not with the support of the narrator. When you feel absolutely at odds with a character in one of these stories it is a strangely alienating experience, for while many writers would allow you to feel that at least they are on your side, O'Connor does not. Almodovar does something similar in his films, I feel, although this collection of short stories is far bleaker than Almodovar, who always seems to wrestle some redemption from the situation, which O'Connor does not (or at least, not often). Superb, and disturbing.

Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience, William Blake

2007-03-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know much about William Blake. When he was 32 (a fine age, in my opinion) he published (as in personally published, he was an artist and printmaker) a series of poems entitled Songs Of Innocence. Despite the death of his younger brother in 1787 (two years previously - an event that had a significant impact on William), these poems are filled with an almost childlike view of the world, embued with hopefulness and optimism. Just five years later he wrote and produced a corollary, Songs Of Experience, much darker and less hopeful. Blake lived in London, and his increasing awareness of the hardships of many of those who lived there, especially children, undoubtedly shaped this move, as perhaps did Britain's wars. From this time on he presented both sets together, occasionally moving poems from one group to the other.

They are strange poems, I feel; there is almost a triteness to those of innocence. The drawings do little for me, I must admit, although reproduced in a paperback book they will hardly have the impact of the original. Nevertheless they have a strange magnetism, a way of drawing you in. There is something especially poignant in the movement between the two sets; Blake's naivety in the first set seems chosen as opposed to simply a disposition; within five years he is scathing of some of his earlier prescriptions. Two passages that stood out for me, the first from the Songs Of Innocence, the second from Songs Of Experience.

from 'The Little Black Boy'
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

'The Garden of Love'
I went to the Garden of Love.
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not, writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Beware Of God, Shalom Auslander

2007-03-19T03:23:00.000-07:00

Auslander was brought up in the US as an Orthodox Jew; this collection of short stories (short satires might be a better description) is fuelled by this background. It is a bit hit and miss, but when he is on the mark he is both laughoutloud funny and bitingly sharp. In one story a middle-aged man narrowly escapes death in a road accident; while he is becoming religious as a result, God, Lucifer and Death are tracking him down across Manhatten to finish the botched job. In another God goes to an advertising agency for a campaign to improve his image. Immensely readable, Auslander has in his irreverence a way of saying something true, and necessary. Comedy as the prophetic; we could do with some more of that.

How To Live Forever Or Die Trying, Brian Appleyard

2007-03-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is a book about living forever. Well, almost. There is an increasing belief in gerontology that life extension technology is moving us speedily in the direction of being able to live a lot longer - in the last one hundred years alone life expectancy has risen in the western world dramatically, thanks to the eradication of many diseases, better diet, etc. Nanotechnology, however, may very well open this door much wider. It appears that there is no inherent necessity to age - our cells collect debris and eventually break down, but if we could find a way to stop this happening then we could become, for all intents and purposes (and accidents aside), immortal. Nanotechnology may well help here by allowing small machines which would effectively 'clean out' our cells, preventing us ageing.

This fascinating book explores not only the science behind this (in very accessible language), but also the philosophy; supposing this is indeed possible, is it desirable? What would the world look like if it happened? And also the history - the desire to live longer, or indeed forever, the quest for the holy grail. My initial reaction, as I started to read, was one of abstracted, humoured interest; I certainly wouldn't want to live forever. Life has a rhythm, a pace, a length which makes sense. But offered a pill, on my deathbed, which will allow me to prolong my life indefinitely, and not with an old, decaying body but perenially in my late twenties, would I decline? Would you?

But Beautiful, Geoff Dyer

2007-03-01T03:38:00.000-08:00

It's hard to know where to start with this book. It's the best book of its type I have read, although what its 'type' is is hard to say. Ostensibly a history of jazz, or more accurately jazz musicians, Dyer does with his writing what jazz players do with the music - take a standard and improvise. The book is essentially a collection of small novellas, blurry fictitious/factual stories based around anecdotes, histories, transcripts. It is pure genius, and I don't use the phrase lightly - he manages to convey a sense of the drama, and danger, of the music in its changing social contexts, and the damage and joy it brought in its wake. It is an extraordinary tale, a striking balance of the personal and the political - anyone interested in the interface of arts and social change should read this. Dammit, everyone should read this. I can't recommend it highly enough.

The Shadow Of The Sun: My African Life, Ryszard Kapuscinski

2007-02-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

Ryszard Kapuscinski died earlier this year. I came across his obituary in the newspaper, and heard him discussed on the radio; I had never heard of him before. He was the first Polish journalist to be based in Africa, and spent over forty years there, traveling and reporting on independence movements, wars, revolutions, massacres, famine. The Shadow Of The Sun is his memoir, a powerful, moving, and beautifully written series of personal stories and reflections. He shows a sensitivity and an awareness, and a breadth of vision which is greater than anything else I have seen or read on Africa. He never allows the 'large issues' to dominate the real people he meets, and yet communicates simply and with passion how these individuals' stories fit within the larger mystery that is Africa. This is, simply, a superb book, gripping and wise. Anyone with any interest in Africa, or in good personal journalism, should read it.

A separate point, worth making; it is translated brilliantly from the Polish by Clara Glowceska. Translation is an often underappreciated art, but Glowceska writes in simple, lyrical prose; it is a joy to read.