As eye-catching as graffiti, but lacking the emotional power of Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (2006).
This fourth and final novel by the acclaimed Ivoirian (1927–2003), published in France in 2000, combines an invented child-soldier’s story with that of a gallery of real warlords.
The narrator, Birahima, a ten-year-old who loves to cuss, belongs to the Malinké tribe of Ivory Coast—“Black Nigger African Natives”—a constant refrain; but Birahima has access to four different dictionaries, and he proudly parades definitions (an over-used device). In this way, Kourouma sets up a tension between the “primitive” and the “civilized.” The self-styled street kid drops out of village school after third grade (the dictionaries come later)—his father died young; his mother after injuries incurred in the ceremony of excision (clitoris removal). The village elders decide Birahima must join his aunt, who has fled from her abusive husband to Liberia, so in June 1993, he begins his journey, accompanied by Yacouba, a village hotshot, a money multiplier and marabout (fortune-teller) bedecked in grigris (amulets). This is a world saturated in history and superstitions, which coexist with Islam and Christianity; what’s new are the child soldiers in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Eager to join them, Birahima gets his chance soon enough and is given a kalash (AK-47). He participates in the killing, and sees fellow child-soldiers killed in a kind of dark vaudeville. His quest for his aunt is put on hold while the author offers thumbnail sketches of Liberian warlords such as Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson. Kourouma then delves (too deeply) into a ribald history of factional blood-letting in Sierra Leone; top billing goes to Foday Sankoh, that notorious amputator of hands and arms. ECOMOG, the Nigerian-dominated peacekeeping force, is also pilloried. The author’s implicit message is that all the players, religions included, have failed a generation of young Africans.
As eye-catching as graffiti, but lacking the emotional power of Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (2006).Pub Date: May 8, 2007
ISBN: 0-307-27957-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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