A remarkable book, sure to be widely read. Suffice it to say that things don’t turn out as the dictator—or we—expected.
A sprawling allegory starring an African dictator who isn’t having the best of times.
As Kenyan novelist-in-exile Ngugi’s tale opens, the Ruler of Aburiria has come down with a curious illness. Some of the citizenry hold that a curse involving the anus of a “wronged he-goat” and hair stolen away by the Ruler’s barber is to blame; others maintain that the malady “was the sole work of the demons that the Ruler had housed in a special chamber in the State House.” Whatever the case, the Ruler is in dire straits. All his grand projects—including vaulting skyscrapers and a personal spaceship—are coming to naught, while the streets of the capital are “lined on either side with mountains of garbage.” Humiliated but ever proud, and now exhibiting some very strange symptoms, the Ruler enlists the aid of a sorcerer considered hostile to the regime. The Wizard of the Crow isn’t particular. A “first come, first served wizard,” a shape-shifter on the run one minute and in league with the secret police the next, he’s glad to get the gig. The Wizard has had some successes in the past, dispensing remedies such as “Wash each other, then take turns rubbing oil onto each other.” Question is, will the Ruler take his medicine? Meanwhile, there are other issues to confront, including dealing with the Global Bank representative who berates the Ruler for the odd fact that “Aburirian women have started beating up men” while Aburirians of all genders and ages spend most of their time standing in line. Not my fault, says the Ruler: “I am sure that the queuing nonsense is the work of a terrorist dissident movement.” Which, of course, is all he needs to say in a war-on-terror world.
A remarkable book, sure to be widely read. Suffice it to say that things don’t turn out as the dictator—or we—expected.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2006
ISBN: 978-0-375-42248-5
Page Count: 765
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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