Another fine, though imperfect novel from an intelligent and inventive storyteller.
An ambitious young man travels far from his homeland, family and a burdensome ancestral obligation in the native Indian (now Canadian) author’s lyrical sixth novel.
Vassanji (a two-time Giller Prize–winner, for The Book of Secrets, 1996, and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, 2004) dramatizes experiences of exile and cultural conflict in parallel narratives set centuries apart, whose similarities are subtly, patiently disclosed. In the 1960s, Karsan Dargawalla grows up into an awareness of the rapidly changing world beyond his West Indian village (Haripir) and a determination to escape the duty toward which his father, a devout Sufi Muslim, has pointed him: their family’s service as “lords” (i.e., priests) of the historic shrine of Pirbaag. In an interpolated story which begins in 1260 A.D., Karsan’s “pilgrimage” (away from holiness) finds its counterpart in the story of Nur Fazal, a wanderer from the north who has survived Mongol oppression, becomes the favorite of an Indian ruler and marries a princess, and subsequently prospers and despairs, in a manner that echoes Karsan’s regrets and sufferings. This richly imagined novel is rendered even more complex by the fragmentation of Karsan’s story into three parts: a childhood dominated by his father’s firm traditionalism; years of intellectual growth, marriage and fatherhood, then of tragic loss in North America; and his disenchanted return to Haripir, following the deaths of his parents and the further loss of his beloved younger brother—to violent Muslim fundamentalism. The novel’s several parts do not satisfactorily cohere, but its slowly gathering power cannot be denied. And Vassanji achieves some spectacular ironic reversals, as the embattled Karsan—one fated, it seems, to keep on learning, however painful the experience—gradually discovers “the secret of the identity of Nur Fazal,” and the significance of the ancient tale in the context of his own demanding, disordered life.
Another fine, though imperfect novel from an intelligent and inventive storyteller.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4217-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
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