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SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND

Name: SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND
Author: Edward Wilson-Lee
ISBN: 978-0-374-26207-5

IN SEARCH OF A GLOBAL POET

by Edward Wilson-Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2016

Wilson-Lee enjoyably melds memoir, history, and literary travelogue to reveal the surprising hold that Shakespeare continues...

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Pursuing the Bard across the history, geography, and culture of East Africa.

Wilson-Lee (English/Sidney Sussex Coll.; co-editor: Translation and the Book Trade in Early Modern Europe, 2014), who spent his childhood in East Africa and teaches Shakespeare, takes readers on a trek through Zanzibar, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan to discover Shakespeare’s legacy on those areas. He begins with famous African explorers for whom Shakespeare was indispensable; Sir Richard Francis Burton carried a volume of Shakespeare while crossing both bog and savanna when he set out to find the source of the Nile. Henry Morton Stanley “recounted burning his copy of Shakespeare to mollify tribesmen who viewed his books as witchcraft. Wilson-Lee chronicles his visit to Zanzibar, the site of Edward Steere’s 1867 printing of the Hadithi za Kiingereza, a collection of four Shakespearean tales and one of the earliest printed publications in Swahili; and Mombasa, where, at the end of the 19th century, tens of thousands of Indians arrived to build the railways, bringing their love of Shakespeare with them. The author also discusses his visit to Makerere University in Kampala, where teaching and performance of Shakespeare flourished during the 1940s; Dar es Salaam, where the first president of Tanzania translated Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice into Swahili; and Ethiopia, where Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin won favor from Emperor Haile Selassie for his production of Othello. In Nairobi, on the grounds of the coffee farm described by Karen Blixen in Out of Africa, Wilson-Lee reminisces about his youth among the Gikuyu people there. At its core, Shakespeare in Swahililand is as much the author’s story as it is Shakespeare’s or Africa’s.

Wilson-Lee enjoyably melds memoir, history, and literary travelogue to reveal the surprising hold that Shakespeare continues to have on a culture remote from his own.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-374-26207-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016

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.