by Zak Vegha ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2016
An engaging though excessively wordy examination of Nigeria and the challenges facing the nation.
A debut memoir explores life in Nigeria from the earliest days of independence to the present.
In this volume, Vegha takes a third-person approach to his personal history, telling the story of Zak, beginning with the day the protagonist, from one of Nigeria’s ethnic minorities, is forcibly retired from his job as a pilot. The author then traces Zak’s life, from childhood through primary and secondary education, professional training in the United States and England, career development, and unsuccessful marriages. Vegha links the character’s experiences to Nigeria’s evolution as an independent nation and reflects on the past (“Growing up in pre-independence rural Nigeria was like standing by the entrance of a room with the door shut, hearing the noise of activity within but having no idea what might be going on in there”). Zak confronts trials ranging from dictatorial teachers during his school days to prejudice in professional settings, retaining a clear sense of his own purpose while acknowledging the toll the adverse situations take on him. His champion throughout is his mother, who makes frequent appearances as his advocate and as a force for stability. The author also presents corruption as a serious problem for the nation, detailing many cases of unethical behavior that Zak observes and has to deal with. The writing is uneven, a mix of insightful and vivid description (“This young man was known to be a yam-and-beans major and could sweep triple rations without mincing”) and excessively wordy prose (“Zak was neither a banker nor an economist, yet he could not fail to observe the aberration in the environment that spelt economic crunch for the teeming population but mounted humungous profits for the banks even as industries lost capacity and many were folding up or moving out of the seemingly unhealthy business environment”), making the book far longer than necessary. Vegha, clearly passionate about Nigeria’s future and the obstacles it faces, presents a detailed portrait of daily life in a country and culture that will be unfamiliar to many U.S. readers. (A glossary identifies and defines the many geographic locations and regional terms used in the book.) Although the volume loses focus in many overly long sections, it offers a thoughtful and impassioned analysis of the post-colonial experience through the context of an individual life.
An engaging though excessively wordy examination of Nigeria and the challenges facing the nation.Pub Date: March 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4828-6147-1
Page Count: 636
Publisher: PartridgeAfrica
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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