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THE MONKS OF TIBHIRINE

Name: THE MONKS OF TIBHIRINE
Author: John W. Kiser
ISBN: 0-312-25317-6

FAITH, LOVE, AND TERROR IN ALGERIA

by John W. Kiser ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2001

Muslims and Christians can live together, Kiser’s poignant narrative asserts, and extremism comes to no good end.

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A heart-wrenching tale of French monks slaughtered by Islamic extremists in Algeria.

Not because they were Christians, the author argues early on, but because they refused to leave their Muslim friends. Their murderers didn’t necessarily see it that way, however. The 1996 massacre of the seven monks at the Tibhirine monastery in military-controlled Algeria was part of a radical Islamic wave that killed foreigners of all stripes simply because they weren’t Muslim. Kiser personalizes this tragic episode of recent history. His painstaking characterization of each monk, especially the prior of the monastery, Brother Christian-Marie, makes this an incredibly emotional story. A former officer in the French army who fell in love with Algeria during the country’s war of independence, Brother Christian-Marie raised the eyebrows of other Trappists with his studies of Islam. He was supposed to devote his life to contemplation; instead, he focused on how he might bring his little Christian community closer to the Muslim world surrounding it. Local Muslims loved the monastery in return, viewing the monks as holy men who could be depended upon for food and medical attention. In his debut, technologies broker Kiser builds up the drama leading to the monks’ death with the skill of a novelist. Anti-government rebels who want to purge Algeria of non-Muslim influences visit the monastery but are held off at first by Christian’s combination of piety and brusqueness. As the crisis mounts and other non-Muslims are killed nearby, however, the steadfast monks grow fearful. They band together even more closely and send their youngest member off to France to continue his studies. The reader feels helpless as the kind and harmless brethren await their doom. When the prior and his monks are finally carried away and killed, their pointless deaths illustrate the consequences of vengeful religion.

Muslims and Christians can live together, Kiser’s poignant narrative asserts, and extremism comes to no good end.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-312-25317-6

Page Count: 320

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)