Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.

With these words Isak Dinesen (the pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen) begins her account of her 17 years in Africa as a coffee farmer, beginning in 1913. For those who have seen the movie, the book will be a surprise. Instead of a straightforward life story told in a linear way, the book consists of vignettes about persons or events. Dinesen’s husband is barely mentioned, and her love affair with Denys Finch-Hatton comes off sounding like a close friendship. What you get instead are stories grouped around certain themes.

For instance, in one early chapter we meet Kamante, a boy with serious ulcers on his leg. Dinesen tries to cure him on her own, but winds up taking him to the local hospital. He stays there for many months until he is healed, and then returns to the farm to become Dinesen’s cook. Another series of stories concerns an accidental shooting on the farm that kills one child and seriously injures another. Dinesen explains that the native African system of justice is not so concerned with meting out punishment, but instead seeks to determine a just recompense for the parents of the dead or injured children. There is also an exciting lion-hunting sequence that I was surprised not to find in the movie. It was so cinematic with Dinesen and Finch-Hatton hunting two lions at night with one gun and a failing lantern.

While Dinesen doesn’t let us see into her most intimate thoughts, she does come across as a strong woman who is ready and able to meet most challenges. She is someone we admire and would like to know. And, more importantly for the reader, she is a good storyteller. In Out of Africa she tells some of her best.

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Lower River by Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux, author of Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cape Town to Cairo and many other novels and travel narratives, has written a taut and tense story about sixty-something Ellis Hock. Having spent forty years minding the family haberdashery before and since his father’s death while marrying and raising a daughter, Ellis now finds himself single after his wife discovers his emails to a variety of women. While the messages aren’t erotic, they reveal a certain intimacy of thought with women who had shopped in his men’s clothing store. After the divorce, he’s lonely and realizes he has been for a long time, remembering only one truly happy period of his life: his four years in the Peace Corps teaching in a tiny Malawi village.

Ellis decides to fly to Africa with an open-ended ticket, intending to stay several weeks and visit Malabo. On his arrival, he discovers the village has changed, and for the worse. The elders are mostly dead with only one or two people left who remember his years with them building a school and teaching in it. The village’s headman is a seemingly pleasant fellow in his thirties, but Ellis is canny enough to realize he is welcome to stay only because of his satchel of money which he hands out in dribs and drabs. Days go by with things promised by the headman not done and when Ellis decides to leave, his attempts to depart the isolated village are thwarted at every turn and take a decidedly sinister turn.

This novel is an interesting picture of cultural differences, and though Ellis is aware how the villagers think from his previous experience, there is no meeting point with them. He is viewed by the poverty stricken locals as a source of riches and always as an outsider. If you’re thinking of retiring to a cheap foreign locale, read this book.

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Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Because I am not a deeply religious person, one might not expect this book to be one I would normal gravitate to but … after reading this book, I don’t think I will ever look at the world of Islam the same way. This is the fascinating story of the emergence of a woman from the limits of the world she was raised in … that of a strict Muslim upbringing. It is the story of a brilliant young woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, even as a young woman, begins to question the tenets of her strict childhood. Today’s headlines scream the warning that the strictest adherents to this religion truly believe that we are all heathens and infidels and must all die!! Especially the Jews!

As Ayaan matures, she more and more questions the tenets of her religion. Because of the wars in Ethiopia and Somalia, her childhood is spent part of the time in Somalia , part in Ethiopia and part in Nairobi, Kenya. To a Muslim, the two most important things are their religion and their family. But the restrictions that are placed on Ayaan and her sister, and the terrible treatment to women that she witnesses, bring even more questions to her young mind.
Ayaan escapes from a forced marriage, first to Germany and then to Holland. In Holland , this brilliant young woman can pursue her destiny.The Dutch almost alone in Europe welcome refugees and encourage them to assimilate with the general population. Ayaan is free to pursue a career , where she can make her own decisions and career choices. She becomes an outspoken critic of her religion and with this criticism comes danger.

I hope that you can learn, as I did, more about the world we live in today. So much has happened just since the planes hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon over a decade ago. This is not necessarily an easy book to read, but it is an utterly fascinating one.

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Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and other books by Alexandra Fuller

Alexandra Fuller, born in England while her parents were briefly living there, moved to central Africa at the age of two, living there until her marriage in 1993 and a move to Wyoming.  She writes nonfiction books:  a reminiscence of her childhood (Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight); an acquaintance’s experiences during several African wars (Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier); her mother’s life (Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness); and The Legend of Colton Bryant, which portrays the life of an unusually interesting young cowboy from Wyoming, who died young in an oil rig accident.  I listened to audio versions of each of these, which enhanced the experience greatly: the first three are read by a narrator with a South African accent, while Colton Bryant’s narrator has a Western twang, putting the listener in mind of the wide open American West immediately.

Whether listened to or read silently, Fuller’s books immediately place you in her setting.  For instance, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight begins:

Mum says, “Don’t come creeping into our room at night.”
They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She says, “Don’t startle us when we’re sleeping.”
“Why not?”
“We might shoot you.”
“Oh.”
“By mistake.”

Fuller’s descriptions are so sensual that you hear, see, feel, and even smell exactly what she is portraying, as in “It is so hot that the flamboyant tree outside cracks to itself, as if already anticipating how it will feel to be on fire…our throats are papered with the heat.”  In addition to the immediacy of her writing, Fuller smoothly fills in pertinent facts and history lessons to help the reader make sense of the complex situations found both in a changing Africa and in oil rush Wyoming.  Nonfiction readers who aren’t simply looking for facts, but for nuance and personal experience, will be enticed by Fuller’s writing and choice of subject.  Fiction readers, too, will be drawn into the place and characters, which are fascinating and personify the old saying, truth is stranger than fiction.

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The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall-Smith

The last time I read anything that could be considered a mystery, I was seven years old and it was a Nancy Drew book. It creeped me out and I swore off mysteries, presumably forever. Recently, however, I decided to give them one more chance and started to read The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.  This is the beginning of a very popular series about Mma Ramotswe, the first and only lady detective in the small Botswana town of Gaborone.  McCall Smith introduces Mma Ramotswe as she is first opening her detective business, and uses flashback to give the reader insight into her past.

McCall Smith divides the novel into several individual cases that Mma Ramotswe solves through clever observation, well-meaning manipulation, and a bit of luck. She deals with unfaithful husbands, an elusive teenager, and an insurance con man, but one case puts to the test her commitment to the truth.  The case of a missing boy threads throughout the novel. Mma Ramotswe dismisses it at first, once she detects the tell-tale signs of the work of witch doctors. But when her friend and would-be suitor, Mr. J.L.B Matekoni, discovers a child’s finger bone in the glove compartment of an influential Gaborone man, Mma Ramotswe is moved to action.

I always enjoy books that describe the essence of a place and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency definitely does that. By writing from Mma Ramotswe’s perspective, McCall Smith is able to use the local style of speech and to describe the setting with fond familiarity. The mystery aspect of this novel was just enough to keep me turning the pages, but not so much that I dreamed about corpses and murder weapons.  I’d recommend this to anyone who is hesitant to read a traditional mysteries and who enjoys discovering new places through literature.

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Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson

I love discovering debut novels that are so good I can’t put them down.  The Kite Runner and The Help were such books and now I can add Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away to my list.

At the center of the story is an immensely likeable and believable main character.  Twelve year old Blessing lives with her family—mother, father and older brother Ezekiel, in Lagos, Nigeria.  The relationship between her parents has always been tempestuous, but Blessing is truly shocked when her father’s infidelity forces her mother to leave him.  With nowhere else to go, her mother takes her children back to the small African village of her birth.

Blessing cannot believe how quickly and dramatically her life has changed.  There is no electricity, no running water, no flush toilets.  Living quarters are cramped and pollution from the nearby oil fields of the Niger Delta casts a pall over the countryside.  Her family’s religion switches overnight from Christianity to the Islam of her grandparents.

Most upsetting of all is the lack of money.  Blessing’s mother finds work as a barmaid at a luxury hotel patronized by the oil field workers, but her salary is inadequate.  Soon both children are suspended from school because they cannot pay tuition.  What happens to the children as a result is the most riveting part of the novel.  Blessing is taken under her grandmother’s wing and becomes an apprentice midwife.  Ezekiel is bereft and is soon under the influence of a local gang, the Sibeye Boys.

Just when you think their lives could not be more complicated, their mother brings home a controversial new boyfriend.  How the family reacts has unexpected and tragic consequences.

In addition to the wonderful voice of Blessing, the novel has many vivid secondary characters who leap to life through Watson’s writing.  The reader quickly becomes involved in their lives and cares greatly about what happens to them.  The Nigerian setting is rendered beautifully and the politics of Africa are woven into the story in a way that is believable without being didactic.  Highly recommended.

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Tarzan of the Apes by Egar Rice Burroughs

Just about everyone has an image in their head of the famous king of the apes, Tarzan.  Whether it’s from the old Hollywood movies starring Johnny Weismuller, the animated Disney version, or even the parody cartoon with the very catchy theme-song, George of the Jungle, we all can picture that loincloth clad ape-man swinging on the vines and calling out with his distinctive yell.  Yet the original source material differs from each of these, mostly in the fact that the other stories (with the exception of Disney) rarely tell the story of what happens before we find the grown he-man lord of the jungle having adventures with Jane.  It was originally a serialized story in a pulp magazine in 1912, and the full novel was published in 1914.

The book opens with Lord and Lady Greystoke traveling to Africa by ship when a mutiny takes place and the new captain puts their passengers off the ship on the West coast of the continent with their provisions.  Lord Greystoke (John Clayton) builds a small but sturdy one room hut and he and his expecting wife begin their new life stranded on the edge of a vast jungle wilderness. Their son is soon born and John must defend his family against the aggressive and wild creatures of the dark continent. After one such encounter Lady Alice becomes knocked unconscious, loses her wits and after a year of  thinking that she’s hallucinating their jungle surroundings, she dies.  John is heartbroken and doesn’t know how he will care for his son.  Another animal attack answers that question for him, leaving him dead as well, and the baby all alone and crying for his parents. Meanwhile, the female ape Kala has just lost her baby and when her troop of apes visits the little cabin on the edge of the jungle, she discovers the babe and takes him to raise as her own, naming him Tarzan, which means “white ape.”

The next section of the book describes the lives of the apes in greater detail – and here is where we enter the “Fantasy” category as Ms. Goodall would probably have words with Mr. Burroughs over his portrayal of the apes.  But, as this is fiction written shortly after the height of the Victorian Adventure period, and given that writers such as H. Rider Haggard and Jules Verne were some of Mr. Burroughs inspirations, we can simply accept this as the work of a very talented imagination and move on. Young Tarzan wonders why he is different from the rest of his family, and eventually discovers the small cabin of his biological parents.  Inside it are photographs of people who look like he does, and books intended for a young child, including a picture dictionary that teaches Tarzan how to read by matching the “little bugs” (letters) to the pictures.  Tarzan’s life is split between spending time with his ape family, becoming the fierce hunter and rival to the great ape Kerchak, and going back to the little cabin and continuing to read and learn more about the world of humans.  Next comes the arrival of Archimedes Q. Porter (one of the most fun names in literature), his daughter Jane, and their companion and guide Mr. Clayton, son of the current Lord Greystoke, as the other one died many years ago.  Further adventures abound for Tarzan and the Porters, both in the rest of this wonderful novel, as well as in the subsequent stories (which are available as free e-books from Project Gutenberg).

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Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill

This fabulous historical novel is the story of Aminata (Meena) Diallo, an African woman. It is told in flashbacks, beginning when Meena is an old woman living in London who is convinced to write her life’s history by a committee of men attempting to end the slave trade.

Meena’s tale begins when she is a young Muslim girl who is captured by the slave traders near her home village in Africa.  She is marched to the coast and then sent across the Atlantic on a slave ship.  Despite being young and small, Meena is a valuable slave because of her skill as a midwife.  In the colonies, she is sold and endures years as a slave.  After marrying, having a child, and losing both of them, she is purchase by a Jewish man from Charleston, who allows her to work as a midwife for a portion of her takings. Meena manages to escape from slavery when they travel to New York City.  During the American Revolution she works for the British, which provides her the opportunity to escape slavery all together.

This brief summery does not do justice to the tale in any way.  The novel is rich in historical details about the indigo trade, the slave ships, and the relationship of the British to the Africans and slaves in America.   The book was powerful and captivating. Like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, it allows you to experience the whole of another person’s life, one who overcame things we can’t even imagine.

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Mixed Blood by Roger Smith

In recent years I have found myself indulging more into crime fiction, particularly stories that place a strong emphasis on geography and how the overall physical environment of a place can affect the psyche of the characters.  George Pelecanos’s urban noir is a good example of this, as is Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series.   The dark alleys of DC and Baltimore help shape the behaviors of the misbegotten street kids inside of Pelecanos’s world, whereas Mankell often relies on the blinding white isolation of snow-laden Sweden to create an icy world of fear and danger.   But, I must say in the case of Roger Smith’s Cape Town, the thugs, the volatile racism, and the corrupt cops make the characters in the aforementioned writers’ stories look like the lollipop guild.

I read Mixed Blood in two days, definitely getting that can’t-put-it-down sensation you get from a good, fast-paced crime story.  I did take issue with the fact that pretty much all of the characters were detestable in one way or another, just completely incapable of gaining your sympathy.  Apart from the victimized children, there are no innocents in this novel.  Everyone was greedy and violent, leaving a prevalent bloodlust throughout the entire story, (which is probably what the writer was going for; simply illustrating the effects that one of the world’s most dangerous cities has on its inhabitants). The police officer, Rudi Barnard, aka. “Gatsby,” has to be the most ghastly villain ever interjected into a crime novel.  Jack Burn, the former criminal turned family man, just can’t seem to shake his shady past.  Benny Mongrel, the dog-loving ex-con who works as a nightwatch man, may be the most likeable character, but even Benny is a sociopath in his own right.  Regardless of my minor complaints, overall I thought this was a well-written and fascinating story, and I loved the South African ghetto backdrop.  Definitely not recommended for the faint of heart.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

Do you ever hear about books on NPR that you immediately squirrel away in your brain for future reference only to forget every identifying feature?  I remembered this one long enough to recommend it for purchase when I got to work, but I must have forgotten all about it immediately afterwards.  Almost two years later, I stumbled upon a lonely copy in the stacks, and, far adrift on the waters of my memory, I heard a faint call for attention. The book seemed to sharpen into focus as I pulled the slim volume from the shelf and said to myself, “Oh yeah, I remember this .”

The book caught my attention initially because it’s set in my hometown of Washington, D.C., but also because of its nuanced treatment of its subject: African refugees adapting to life in the United States. Whatever show I was listening to was exploring the topic of the “Lost Children of Sudan” – a generation of immigrant children who settled in America after a perilous flight from war and genocide. These children are now adults, and their stories are beginning to be told by authors like Mengestu who immigrated from Africa at a very young age.

Mengestu’s book is not about Sudanese-Americans, but his characters have similar backgrounds.  Sefa, the main character, fled Ethiopia as a young teen in fear for his life after his father was murdered by revolutionaries. Together with his two expatriot friends, Sefa struggles to come to terms with unrootedness in a society that seems to have promised more than it was capable of delivering.  However, Mengestu avoids turning his novel into political commentary on a particular nation or group; his characters do not represent entire cultures. Instead, they are individuals coping with forces that shaped them in Africa, and which, perhaps surprisingly, continue to define them in America.

Sefa’s corner store is located in a run-down part of D.C. that is beginning to alter under the influence of gentrification.  As expensive houses appear and the old residents are pushed out by the new, the neighborhood’s racial and class structure is disrupted. Although Sefa takes no active role in the events, he becomes involved by virtue of his semi-romantic relationship with one of the new well-off white residents.  These developments add to his sense of insecurity, and help highlight what has become the central motivation of his life: a desire for stability. Sefa contrasts with his fellow displaced Ethiopians in that he recognizes his disconnectedness from his homeland as well as his adopted home.  In an interesting scene, Sefa visits his uncle’s apartment building which has been transformed into an insular village of unrooted Ethiopians who have been unable or unwilling to assimilate into American culture.

The book has its flaws. The pacing and transitions are sometimes confusing, and not all characters are as interesting as Sefa himself. Mengestu is strongest when writing about the group of three African friends coping with their new existence. One gets the sense of them as complex individuals who are intelligent and open-minded. The greatest accomplishment of the novel is that by crafting such well-realized individuals, Mengetsu makes an entire people who are characterized so strongly by “otherness” more familiar.

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