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INNOCENTS IN AFRICA

Name: INNOCENTS IN AFRICA
Author: Drury Pifer
ISBN: 0-15-107564-6

AN AMERICAN FAMILY'S STORY

by Drury Pifer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1994

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A beautifully rendered, bittersweet memoir of an American family abroad in an alien place—the bleak mining towns of southern Africa in the 1930's and 40's—that limns exactly childhood's enviable ability to live for the moment. To tell his tale, Pifer (a playwright and former pilot born in 1933) relies on his memories but most of all on his parents' letters to his grandmother—a weekly record of their 13 years in Africa. His father—a mining engineer who graduated at the height of the Depression—accepted a position at a South African gold mine because it was the only offer he got. Excited by the prospects, Pifer's newly married parents sold their wedding presents, borrowed money for their passage, and left home: ``The Depression set them in motion, the Namaqualand desert would burn up their youth, the European war would keep them exiled,'' and soon, in a parched land, they would travel from ``innocence to experience.'' It's this innocence—a distinctly American innocence—that kept the family from folding as Pifer's father, energetic and talented, was always denied his due rewards. ``Fooled by Africa, he pressed American solutions onto African complexities,'' but caught between wily English mine-owners and resentful Afrikaner miners who hated anything English, his efforts to improve conditions for the Africans were inevitably sabotaged—in Nigel, a dusty, mean place where the author was born; in the desert outposts where De Beers diamonds are mined and the wind blows every afternoon; even in Kimberley, where the family lived well. Hardships caused his mother's early death, Pifer says, and shadowed his father's life- -but as for himself, the experience let him ``advance at my own slow African pace, picking my confused way through a world where there existed not one but two sources of light.'' A book of so many good things—love, wisdom, and luminous prose—that's also a unique record of an American childhood in pre- 1948 South Africa. (B&w photographs)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-15-107564-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.