The Street Lawyer

“The Street Lawyer” could have been the narrator, Michael Brock, an antitrust lawyer who’s been slaving it at the big law firm of Drake & Sweeney for seven years as an associate, with a few years left for him to make full partner and earn big bucks. And it could also have been big, knowledgeable, caring and competent lawyer Mordecai Green whose 14th Street Legal Clinic has been catering to the needs of the poor and homeless for many years. And without him, much of the achievements in the story might not have taken place.

Having noted that, the story is one that highlights the plight of the poor and homeless, living in big American cities in the midst of wealth and plenty. One of the poor and homeless, DeVon Hardy, decides to take it upon himself to do something to force some people to notice, even it costs him his life. He and 16 other tenants in an abandoned warehouse were improperly evicted as “squatters” when in fact they had been paying $100 monthly rent, thrown out into the cold February streets of winter in Washington, D. C. He steals a gun and dresses up to look like he had sticks of dynamite wired around his body, ready to explode when he pulls a wire. He traces the firm of lawyers that handled the eviction, Drake & Sweeney, goes there and takes Michael and some of his fellow lawyers hostage, terrorizing them for a while and reprimanding them for making so much money without a thought for the poor. Wrongly thinking that he aims to harm his victims, high-powered hostage rescue teams are drawn up outside, and at their first opportunity at aiming a shot at him, he is gunned down. Right behind him is Michael Brock that he’d made spokesman for the hostages, and the experience of coming so close to death, of having Hardy’s brains and blood spilled on him, changes him thereafter.

Hardy had brought up the 14th Street Legal Clinic while he interrogated the hostages, so Michael goes there asking around. First he wants assurance that Hardy wasn’t HIV-positive. Then he gets more involved, and either for guilt or something else, he quits his big firm job and joins them. When it becomes clear that those 17 people including Hardy were wrongly evicted, leading to some deaths, Drake & Sweeney is hit with a law suit by the 14th Street Legal Clinic, spearheaded by him and Mordecai. They have to beg for out-of-court settlement to avoid being seriously damaged further in the press. Very interesting reading indeed.

October 31, 2015. Novel published in 1999 by Island Books (Dell Publishing), ISBN 0-440-22570-1. Picture source: Google Images.

The Broker

“The Broker” is Joel Backman, once head of a prestigious law firm that specialized in high-powered lobbying of American lawmakers and politicians. His final deal involved peddling a software system designed by Pakistani hackers to neutralize the most sophisticated but secretly deployed satellite surveillance system to the highest bidder—the Chinese, Saudis, Israelis. After some money changed hands, he is arrested by US authorities on trumped-up charges. The people that paid transaction money for the software felt shortchanged, while those that built the satellite wanted him and the software at all cost. To avoid their wrath he pleads guilty to charges so he could be hidden away in prison for 14 years.

But only a few months down the line the CIA that is still puzzled about the secret satellite decides to get the out-going US President to pardon Backman conditionally. Their plan is to hide him in a foreign place and after a while leak his location to those that might want him dead so as to find out who would go after him, believing those people would have the highest interest in the satellite. Backman agrees to the deal though without knowing why he was being released. He is ferreted to a new home in Italy using two different names. In the course of his learning Italian, paid for by the CIA, we are treated to some Italian art and cuisine and history. He also falls in love with one of his tutors, a woman that later saves his life by giving him her dying husband’s passport and changing his looks to match the photo in it. Unknown to the CIA that are controlling his new life in Italy, he makes contact with his lawyer son in the US who secretly sends him a smartphone with which they communicate. He manages to escape death at the hands of the trained killer agents from China and Israel, goes back to the US without the knowledge of the CIA that had agents watching him, and eventually buys some safety for himself by releasing the powerful software to the US army. In exchange he’s provided two identities, two passports, and a promise to intervene with the foreign powers that had been after his life because of the software.

The story touches on how the CIA relates with the American president and their role in establishing or influencing American foreign policy. A new US president is shown asking the acting CIA director what step should be taken for the best American interest. Then there is the realization that your own American government could secretly want you dead, especially if its laws can’t get you. They can also hide you by giving you new identities, which means what some crooks do in selling stolen or forged passports and such is also done legally. The methods of grooming lethal agents to kill and speak many languages so as to be able to disguise as nationals of many nations comes to light in the character of the Chinese, Sammy Tin. How secret agents go about their job of trailing their targets, being able to shoot with skill, to kill and disappear without evidence is also shown. There is mention of how non-Americans are treated shabbily by immigration officials at airports. Kwytemail is introduced as a public but very secure email system, and Backman’s very hard to guess (and long) password could not be broken even by agents of the CIA when eventually his smartphone is discovered and covertly stolen by them. When his smartphone gets taken, Backman has to quickly learn to use a cyber-café to go online. And the Swiss as being bankers for the world’s illegally-acquired loot also come to play. In all, an interesting and exciting plot to read.

October 23, 2015. Novel first published in 2005 by Bantam Dell, ISBN 0-440-24158-8. Picture source: Google Images.

Man of the Hour

This is a story of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, played out in New York several decades later. It’s the story of the Hamdy family, parents that left the Middle East to begin life in America, mother that held on to her traditional Muslim beliefs and even killing herself to avoid further humiliation, the father that married an American woman afterward and wanted to live in peace; the bitter son Nasser who slowly got entangled with terrorists, and the bright and beautiful first daughter Elizabeth. It is the story of Arabs in America, the ones for peace, and the ones for revolt by violent means as a way of communicating their resentment at America’s support for their perceived oppressor, Israel.

It is also the story of teenagers growing up and attending high school, being taught to think for themselves and make decisions on their own by their teacher, David Fitzgerald. It is the story that examines the nature and meaning of being a hero. And it is a story that throws up the issue of divorce and the fight for custody of kids. Very thrilling to read.

September 3, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel first published in 1999 by Little, Brown and Company; this Warner Books edition being published in 2000, ISBN 0-446-60541-7.

Orimili

A philosophical Igbo cultural story set mainly in the 1940’s. The main character Orimili took this name from a nearby river in the town. He was hardworking and probably among the wealthiest, but his application to join the ozo society governing the town met with some resistance, the stated reason being that his great-grandfather had come to the town from somewhere and not born there. Because of this he’d always wanted to do things to root his family properly in the town.

The decision of his son to marry in Britain without his permission—after he’d begun arrangements to marry his friend’s daughter for him—turned his life upside down. The ozo title was however given to his son as an honor for being the first foreign-educated in the town and more-so being a politician.
It is rather a slow-paced story with page-long paragraphs, 90% thought and 10% action. The use of gods to explain life in the traditional society sometimes appeared too ridiculous. There seemed to be a god for almost everything—the land, river, crops, etc.

August 31, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel originally published in 1991. Picture source: Google Images.

An Error of Judgment

This novel centers around a doctor of a broken marriage who is convinced there’s something bad about him, deep down, an urge to destroy. He tries to run away from himself, first by quitting medical practice, where he sees himself as enjoying the destruction of disease. He becomes a consultant and sets up a night club for lonely people. Again he quits this, feeling he might have been motivated by the same need to cause harm and enjoy pain.

A lifeline plot revolves around the murder of an old drunk woman by three teenagers one night. Afterwards there is a new young “patient” in Setter’s club. Initially Setter suspects him of knowing something about the murder. Later, he is convinced that Sammy was the one who did the most in killing the woman. He pays close attention to Sammy and then gets him to confess his act. He does not inform the authorities, however takes it upon himself to wield judgment—death. First he takes Sammy to France so that Sammy could enjoy himself. He tests Sammy further and realizes that Sammy has no conscience, has no dreams, and could kill again in the right circumstances. He then carries out judgment by advising Sammy to take a certain amount of alcoholic drink and a certain amount of his doctor’s prescription, that he would feel better the next morning. Sammy follows his advice and is discovered dead the next morning.

August 31, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1962. Picture source: Google Images.

Mayombe

Pepetela is the pen-name of Artur Pestana, or Artur Carlos Mauricio dos Santos. He was a half-caste Angolan who participated in the liberation struggle of the MPLA (People’s Movement for the liberation of Angola) in the early 1970s. This tale was based on his experience of the struggle. The original version in Portuguese was translated in 1983 into English by Michael Wolfers.

The story highlights the exploitation at the bottom of liberation struggles, and brings about the personalities of the types of people that take part in the liberation struggle, told mostly in third person, with first-person snapshots of the thinking of the key characters: Theory who is half-white and in the struggle to prove his commitment to the black people; Struggle the only person from the Cabinda area whose people were generally seen as traitors. Fearless the commander from the Kikongo tribe, who has grown into an old man of war at thirty-five seeing no role for himself once the struggle was won. The Political Commissar who was Kimbundu and under the shadow of the commander until the commander decides not to wade into his sexual problems with Ondine and then starts resenting him. And so on.

The plot is short, two missions from a base in the Mayombe forests interspersed with the scandal of a leader comrade (Andre) being found out after he’d had sex with a female comrade (Ondine) in the bush at Dolisie. But it generally draws out the play of tribalism within the members of the group, the distrust and arguments about tribal domination and past conquests. During the second and last mission, the commander and Struggle are killed but more in an effort to defend the position of the Commissar: A Cabinda and a Kikongo died to save a Kimbundu. So the message was clear that tribalism was a problem to be discouraged among the African peoples.

August 26, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 1980. Picture source: Google Images.

The Russia House

It is two years after perestroika. Although the leaders of the US and USSR are hugging each other on TV it’s still cold war for their spy networks. And while the doves in the US government are asking for cuts in military spending the hawks are screaming for more. Yakov is a rebel scientist who wants to expose the defects in Russian technology. When his secret documents find their way to the secret service of Britain and US, Barley is recruited and trained in spy work then sent to Russia to establish the genuineness of the source, because the documents were sent to him to publish as a novel, by Yakov whom he met during a visit to Russia.

Barley gets to Russia and falls in love with Katya, a friend of and his contact with Yakov. After his first trip as a spy he is taken over by the Americans who have more at stake in the secret coming out. He agrees to continue and returns to Russia. By this time Yakov had been detained by the Russian authorities. Barley began to suspect this when he noticed that he and Katya were being watched, and again from a letter from Yakov which wasn’t in his usual style. He works out a plan to save Katya and her two kids and puts this into effect when Katya herself learned in code from Yakov that he’d been held. This involved his leaving the British and American secret services to work with the Russians. Katya and her relations were not detained as a result, though Yakov died of illness. After a year in Russia he was in Lisbon, preparing for the arrival of Katya and the kids to join him.

August 26, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1989. Picture source: Google Images.

Maru

A thoughtful and poetic little novel about racial discrimination in Botswana against the Bushman people. When the orphan daughter of a Bushman who was raised by an English missionary grows up and goes to teach in a remote village she becomes the target of contempt and hatred by both adults and children, who had taken it for granted for too long that Bushmen (of the Masarwa tribe) were only on Earth to be their slaves. Then two prominent men fall in love with the lady and wage war against each other for her sake, the first time since their long years of friendship.

August 26, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel originally published in 1971. Picture source: Google Images.

Altered States

Eddie Jessup is an ex-religious scientist investigating altered states of consciousness. He goes to Mexico and joins an Indian tribe in a mushroom smoking ritual, where he experiences a sense of return to an earlier period in man’s evolution. He takes some of the mushroom stuff back to the lab where the active drug was identified and then synthesized. In an effort to study the drug’s effects further, he takes some and goes into an isolation tank, with some colleagues standing by to observe. He transmogrified into an earlier man-form and x-ray pictures proved it. His colleague could hardly take in what happened and tried to discourage him from further testing himself with the drug. Some felt he was getting mad and out of hand, and his wife just returned from Africa on a study was constantly worried for him.

He takes the drug again and enters the isolation tank, alone this time. He changes into an ape-like creature, attacks some of the college staff working the night, follows a pack of dogs and ends up in the African Savannah section of a zoo, where he changes back to normal human form and is found naked asleep by a night guard. His wife and colleagues could hardly believe him and he tries the experiment again under their eyes, to convince them. This time he turns into a black ape and his colleagues do some tests and take blood and tissue samples. But after they leave him he continues transgressing backwards, to the horrifying beginnings of the planet, and is about to turn into thin air but for his wife who could no longer stand it and rushes in to hold him. A terrific climax to a story about a drug that could change one physically to an earlier evolutionary form lasting 4 hours.

August 25, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1978.

The Garbage King

The Garbage King is the gang name given to Mamo, a poor orphan teenage boy forced to live in the streets of Addis Ababa for survival, following the death of the sole breadwinner, the mother, and after an ordeal in the countryside as an enslaved cattle boy. His is one half of the story. The other half is about Dani (Daniel), the spoiled fat son of a rich, popular but very strict man. Dani is not popular at school, not being athletic, not exceeding in science subjects, much to his dad’s displeasure. When he fails most of his exams one more time, his dad decides to send him to a remote countryside place, to a harsh disciplinarian that should put him straight. But rather than spend a day with the dreaded Feissal, Dani decides to run away from home.

The two boys are brought together when they end up sleeping in a cemetery by sheer chance. Dependency and friendship develops and the two are shortly taken in by a nonviolent street gang as members. Dani undergoes the sort of change that the dad wanted in the first place as he learns to survive in the gang, losing his spare fat, becoming lean and watchful. Accounts of the methods of survival in the streets were given, begging, sleeping wrapped up in blankets in the open, foraging through garbage particularly those of restaurants for thrown-away food, doing the toilet in the open waste grounds, showering in nearby rivers. The gang members were happy to share out Dani’s rich clothes at first. But because he really was not poor and homeless like them and he could not do the begging like them (as he could be recognized and then reported to his dad) he was often looked down upon, with the exception of Mamo that usually stood for him. Until he begins writing stories down and Mamo succeeds in selling them for the group. But this very act that sealed his acceptance in the gang was to sow the seeds for his later discovery by the dad who had called up all the people he thought Dani could run to without hearing anything about him. One of Dani’s stories got sold unknowingly to a teacher in Dani’s school, to Dani’s own teacher in fact, who quickly recognized his handwriting then went to see the dad.

Things end happily for everyone, with Dani going back with his father once he was assured he would not be sent to Feissal, and Mamo also going to live with his newly married sister, starting night school to learn to read. The story appears written with kids in mind, with conscious attempts made to avoid explicit language regarding sex, like using “doing it.”

August 25, 2015. Review initially written in 2007. Novel first published in 2003 by Macmillan Children’s Books, this Heinemann Educational Publishers edition being published in 2004. Picture source: Google Images.

Strip Jack

Inspector Rebus novel number 4. This one is set in Edinburgh, around a clique of people that had been friends in earlier school days, a couple of women and four guys. The story is woven around the personalities of members of the group, most prominent being Gregor Jack who had wormed his way to the position of a Member of Parliament.

The story opens with a raid at a high-class brothel in which Jack was one of the men “caught.” It looks like he’s been set up, so the question becomes why and by whom. Then his wife is found murdered and dumped in a river, and a high profile murder investigation starts. As the plot unfolds, we are told the reason Jack visited the brothel was to see his estranged sister. Someone had called him and told him his sister was there. This was how he was set up, and it was one of the members of the clique, someone that happened to be in love with his wife.

As the investigation winds to a conclusion, it turns out that it was Jack himself that murdered his wife in the course of a violent argument following the publication of his scandalous visit to the brothel. He is about to murder the man responsible for that blow to his public image when the cops turn up. In the scuffle that follows, he ends up jumping into another river, in an apparent suicide mission rather than facing arrest and imprisonment.

August 22, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel first published in 1992 by Orion, this edition being published also by Orion in 2005; ISBN 0-75287-723-2.

Under the Frangipani

This is the story of poverty and corruption in the changing society of post-colonial Mozambique. It reflects the nature of white/black relations in the country during colonial times when whites always assumed supremacy, at independence when a lot of whites fled the country to Europe or other white lands. The story, a collection of accounts from selected inmates of a port that had stored slaves in the past, then prisoners of war, and now old people, told with spicing of traditional Mozambican beliefs.

Following the liberation struggle corruption has set in and the old ways are being abandoned. Old people are being ignored or insulted or robbed even by their relations. The mulatto head of the fort (Vastsome Excellency) has died under mysterious circumstances, and a policeman (Izidine) is sent to investigate. His investigation is a series of interviews with the old people, a curious mix of characters, including a white man that refused to flee to Europe with his wife and child, a cursed “man-child” that aged to an old man the same day he was born, and a witch that supposedly turned into water at night. Each one claims to have killed the dead man for his/her own reasons. But then towards the end the truth is revealed by the witch in a sort of trance: That the fort had concealed arms and the old people had destroyed the arms with witchcraft. But when the military men in the know came for the arms and found it gone, they took out their revenge on Vastsome. And now even the policeman that was sent was not safe as he too had been penciled down for elimination. But then again due to witch craft or whatever, the men that were supposed to come and kill him get blown up in terrible stormy weather at the end.

August 22, 2015. Review initially written in 2006. Novel originally published as A Varanda do Frangipani in Portuguese by Caminho, Lisboa in 1996. This English translation was by David Brookshaw, first published in 2001. Picture source: Google Images.

The Man With the President’s Mind

This is a thriller about the Cold War timed in the late sixties. Having had to accept defeat over the Cuban affair on account of President Kennedy, the Soviets are plotting to regain lost glory. To ensure success they need to have a way of predicting American reaction to each of the moves they would make. Operation 471 was created for this: A man with a background similar to the US president’s (Levin) was picked out to live an American life in a replica of the White House, and receiving most of the material that went to the US president, with the main objective of predicting how the president would react to events.

In the first few months things seem to be moving pretty well as Levin’s predictions come true, and the Soviets begin feeling overconfident. The site of the operation is secretly moved to the US itself. Levin had refused going anywhere without his girl and so he was drugged. At the new location Levin finds out that his girl had been eliminated as a security risk, and that the Soviets didn’t just want to reunite Berlin and send foreign forces packing, but to take over Europe with World War III if it came to that. Realizing his government didn’t care much for individual life, he decides to escape from the new site and warn the Americans about the impending doom. He succeeds and the catastrophe is averted, but at a cost of his own life.

August 19, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1977. Picture source: Google Images.

The Crippled Dancer

This is an Igbo novel in English, set somewhere near Aba apparently in the 1940s and fifties. It is a story about inter-family village quarrels, the struggle for power among adults and the lamentation of the elders about the changed youth of the day and the destruction of a glorious past by the ways of the white man.

Specifically it is a story of the struggle of one family to ensure the continuation of their line in the village. The object of this struggle is Ajuzia, whose mother died during his birth, and whose only-surviving-child father died during his youth. He is brought up by his grand parents, who impress on him the need to carry on the family struggles and war with other villagers early in his youth.
He could not reconcile himself with the young wife his grandfather married for him. But he takes on the family struggle personally after he and his grandfather were locked up for four days following a fight with Radio, a notorious son of the village, for having an affair with his grandfather’s wife. When Radio was killed by a speeding car, his grandfather was accused of using witchcraft to cause the death. The elders found the grandfather not guilty.

For a change something good happened—the grandfather rose to the position of senior elder in the village. But then their ancestry was challenged by Chief Orji. Ajuzia had to involve the father of his girlfriend at Aba who happened to be a police boss in winning this last fight, and in having the family’s prime enemy in the village locked up. So that war with the village enemies seemed won. But Ajuzia’s girlfriend was now pregnant. This was something his grand parents would rejoice for, but he first had to break the news to her violent father.

August 19, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1986. Picture source: Google Images.

Polar Shift

“A Novel from THE NUMA^® FILES” and “A Kurt Austin Adventure” is a blend of science fiction—with “the scientific discovery of the century” repeated here and there—and 21st century (2004?) international action thriller. The bad guys have Gant and Margrave at the head of the pack, working for the same purpose but with opposing reasons: They want to cause a geological polar shift by bombarding the earth with electromagnetic energy so as to cause a disruption in the world’s telecommunications systems, believing it would be temporary. But the actual fact is that once the shift starts, there will be no halting it, with the destruction of all living things on earth in its wake. While Margrave’s intention is to force the “Elites” that surreptitiously rule the world via multinational corporations to a bargaining table, Gant actually wants to take over the political world order by owning the world’s telecommunications facilities shortly after the “temporary” disturbances. Gant is a ruthless maniac that would go to any length to achieve his aim, giving orders to eliminate anyone that might pose a threat without blinking an eye. The good guys have Austin and some brilliant and beautiful people leading them, doing their damnedest to first, ensure that the grand-daughter (Karla) of a dead electrical genius (Kovacs) that might possess the “antidote” for a polar shift attempt is not eliminated by agents of Gant, then second, race against time to apply the antidote to checkmate the bad guys.

The author’s major aim was probably more to entertain. When the plans of Gant and Margrave became known to Austin and his team, I was left wondering why they didn’t just put them under arrest. Instead the author let them attempt to unleash their hidden agenda, so that Austin and his people will have something to keep them busy, trying to stop them.

The “the scientific discovery of the century” finally turned out to be living “dwarf” mammoths and a crystal city found inside a spent volcano in a remote Siberian island named Ivory Island. The mammoths were miniature versions of their giant ancestors, previously thought extinct, but now thought to have survived by adapting to the diminishing food sources. The people that built the crystal city inside the mountain had been smart enough to domesticate the mammoths and used them as beasts of burden much the same way horses have been treated.

August 19, 2015. Review initially written in 2014. Novel first published in 2005 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons; this Berkley Books (Penguin Group) edition being published in 2007; ISBN 978-0-425-21048-2.

Abyssinian Chronicles

Originally published in 1998 in Amsterdam as Abessijnse Knonieken, this book is about life in Uganda from the late ’60s to the late ’80s with emphasis on the religious and sociopolitical developments. Told in an all-knowing first-person narrative, it is an account of developments around Mugezi, an Ugandan boy, from birth in a village, to myths and beliefs of villagers, to growing up with the grandmother in the village, then in a strict Catholic family in Kampala, school life in the city and sexual exploits, life in the seminary, the impact of political upheavals from Obote to Idi Amin and back to Obote and guerrilla fighting, to life in university and then as a teacher, to the sometimes suspect role of relief agencies, and finally to life in Amsterdam living among Ugandans in the “Ghetto” and then among whites.

Very interesting, and reveals how similar to Nigeria Uganda is in terms of common colonial past, control of the economy by foreigners, North-South ethnic divide, religion (Islam, Catholics, Protestants, local practices), cultural practices and beliefs (witch doctors and their followers), civil war. Particularly interesting was how Mugezi could easily buy for himself a British passport with birth certificate to match, and how in Amsterdam girls sold their bodies in glass cage displays.

August 17, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 2000. Picture source: Google Images.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

In the British intelligence organization (Circus) one of the top brass (Haydon) got unhappy about the West and decided to work for Russia. He was hired by Karla the mastermind of the Russian spy agency (Moscow Center) to play a game of double cross from within the London Circus. Karla cooked up a plot for Haydon to play to his colleagues in the Circus, that they had an agent in Moscow (Merlin) gathering secret information for them about Russia. A secret agent at the Russian Embassy became the go-between between Merlin and Haydon (alias Gerald to the Russians) under the “Witchcraft” plot by Karla. Haydon though uses this ploy to hide the fact of his working for Karla. The old man in charge of the Circus (Control) got suspicious particularly as he was left out of the Witchcraft club. When this got to Karla he draws up another plan which successfully removed Control through humiliation and death by heart attack.

The Circus was reorganized, with the top people who were loyal to Control being shoved out. Then something unexpected happens and top detectives who heard it began to smell a rat again. Secretly, they ask Smiley who had been Control’s next in command to investigate the past and present in order to discover who was secretly working for Karla. The complete story comes out in the course of his investigation, which was successful in picking out the mole Gerald as Haydon. Has a taste of The Fourth Protocol in having a British citizen secretly working for Russia, but perhaps not as interesting as The Little Drummer Girl.

August 16, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1974. Picture source: Goodreads.com

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

This book is generally about the people and culture of Botswana, a country termed a shining beacon in Africa, a quiet traditionally cattle-rearing people with high moral standards that are somewhat being eroded by modernity and city life. I’ve learnt the most from it about Botswana: The city of Gaborone that used to be called Chief Gaborone’s Place, some other towns and places like Mochudi, Francistown, Lobatse; the widely respected first president that instilled in people the abhorrence of corrupt practices in government, the low population of about two million people many living in rural areas rearing cattle, the manner of referring to males as Rra and females as Mma, the dry weather that made water precious to the people and the land, traditional norms of greeting and courtesy to people, the love for football, and so on.

That is the skeletal framework for the story. To dress it up is a cast made up of two ladies running the country’s first detective agency (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) that have teamed up with a man and his two apprentices running a mechanic workshop (Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors). The senior detective and owner of the agency, Mma Precious Ramotswe, is engaged to the owner of the workshop, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and they have agreed to foster two orphan children. The story brings out a number of incidents in the lives of every one of these people, beginning with Ramotswe’s worries about the fact that her assistant, Mma Makutsi, is a single lady with no suitor.

It is Makutsi that thinks up the idea of setting up a school to teach men typing in secret to save the men from the possible embarrassment of being seen to be learning a woman’s job. In the process one of her students falls in love with her, lying to her that his wife left him with their kids for another man. Though it turns out the wife didn’t actually leave him, he just felt unloved at home. When the wife goes to Ramotswe to get her to find out what the man has been up to, she now has the problem of breaking up the affair without hurting her employee. And this sort of works out quite okay.

Then there is the story of Mr Molefelo, a client with a past he now wants to make amends for, following a near-brush with death, in order to free his conscience. In his younger days he’d gotten his sweetheart pregnant, had secretly robbed the family he was living with to get money for the abortion, and had dumped the girl. Now over twenty years later and after becoming a successful businessman, he wants to find the family and the girl and apologize and give them money if necessary. This also works out well, thanks to the skillful handling by Mma Ramotswe. She finds the family (less the man who’d died) and arranges for a reconciliatory meeting between the widow and Molefelo. She also finds the dumped girl now a happily married woman with kids, and convinces Molefelo to help pay for the education of the woman’s daughter that now wants to be a nurse, since the woman herself could not go on to become a nurse because of the abortion.

The language is rather simple and formal, and it appears the way the cultural habits are explained, the audience is people outside Botswana. One gets the feeling that Africans or at least those from Botswana’s cherished past, were honest, courteous and kind people that loved cattle and the land.

August 16, 2015. Review initially written in 2007. Novel first published in 2002. Picture source: Goodreads.com.

The Negotiator

This is a long but interesting conspiracy tale. The Soviet Union is facing an energy crisis, with dwindling oil reserves and production. They will have to import more from abroad, and to finance the imports less funding will have to go to military spending. Their military chief personally would rather invade Iran for their oil. But Gorbachev is in power and it is the era of perestroika and glasnost, so the military leader’s plan for invasion had to be kept in the cooler.

Following the visits of their leaders to each other, an arms reduction treaty is hammered out between the US and USSR. When in effect, it would lead to reduction in military spending with savings amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. Due to following reduction in military budgets, it will also lead to the bankruptcy of some defense industries, especially in the US where investments had been tied up in the manufacture of advanced weapons. A group of five Americans conspired to force the American President Cormack to resign, by kidnapping and murdering his only son, but making it look like the Soviets were responsible. This would prevent the arms reduction treaty from coming into effect. With the cooperation of some highly placed military men in the Soviet Union who also did not want the treaty to be ratified, the kidnap plan was effected.

In comes Quinn as the negotiator, charged with securing the release of the president’s son from the kidnappers. Relying on skills and experience from negotiating release of kidnap victims in the past, he manages to effect the release of the US President’s son, Simon. But unknown to Quinn the US cabinet and even the CIA people working with him had been compromised by the conspirators, who did all they could to increase the president’s pain over the kidnap and render him unfit to govern. A belt concealing a bomb had been planted on Simon and after he was released, the compromised CIA agent used remote control to trigger the bomb.

The death of Simon nearly led the president to resign as the conspirators wanted. So they were feeling happy about the execution of their plan. Until Quinn, aided by the new intelligence leadership in Russia, managed to checkmate and expose them at the last minute.

The author unfolds the plot without emotion, leaving gaps here and there for the reader’s imagination. He mentions Biafra in the discussion of European and South African mercenaries.

August 11, 2015. Review initially written in 1991. Novel first published in 1989 by Bantam Press (Transworld), this Abiola Bookshop Press edition being published also in 1989; ISBN 978-014-000-X.

My Once Upon a Time

The vicinity is the tough neighborhoods of East London, versus the richer and whiter West London. Boy is a private eye formerly in the paid service of the government, now freelancing. A mysterious man turns up and pays him the biggest advance he’d ever had for any case, forty grand. And all he has to do is to find a particular special woman to be his queen in his country-side estate, within seven days. He thinks it’s going to be easy, until unusual things start happening.

We are taken through the various sides of the city, the street hustlers and drug dealers, the life of the rich in a black-life resort located in the west, nightclub and show violence, hired thugs, and the spiritual lord known as the Race Man, the sport of cricket and an annual event between the West and the Rest. Boy manages to find the woman at last, but falls so in love with her that he’d rather kill his client than give her up to him. He discovered much too late that the man was after all a god known as Eshu (the fallen patron’s saint), and that he had been sent to him. The result of his stabbing the man to death was that he too had to fall.

Author: Diran Adebayo

August 11, 2015. Review initially written in 2001. Novel first published in 2000. Picture source: Google (Images)

The Perk

A very interesting thriller, plotted from so many angles, but with one central theme—the meaning of justice. The hero Beck Hardin left his small town of Fredericksburg near Austin, Texas a teenager angry with his father J.B. Hardin after his mother died, angry with the discriminatory justice meted out by the town judge Stutz. Twenty-four years later he is forced to return to the small town because his own wife has died from cancer and he is unable to raise his two children by himself; they go back to his father who is still very much alive.

Four years before Beck’s return, Heidi, the beautiful daughter of Beck’s high school best friend Aubrey, was killed by a cocaine overdose and found dumped in a ditch. Because of a debt Beck owed Aubrey, Aubrey now wants him to find the killer of this daughter before the time runs out, so that justice could be done. As the story unfolds, Beck is elected the new judge, by a curious stroke of fate, and he quickly finds out why the favored candidate had to drop out at the last hour. As Beck investigates Heidi’s case, he discovers that Heidi’s mother Randi, who divorced Aubrey shortly after Heidi’s death, had in fact contacted the man responsible for her death, movie star Chase Connelly, who settled her with a mansion in Austin and $25 million to be paid over several years but provided she would keep her mouth shut. So now, would it be justice to expose Chase and deprive Randi of her settlement wealth? Beck thinks so.

However by the time he manages to get Chase’s DNA matched with that of the semen found inside Heidi’s vagina, the time for conviction of the culprit has run out. The positive DNA result comes in 57 minutes late. But while the law fails to catch up with Chase, something else does: Heidi had been HIV-positive before Chase had his way with her in his limo. And so had transmitted the virus to him, or so it seemed. When Chase turns up in his courthouse the night he is supposed to be convicted, it is Beck that has to give him both the good news—that he won’t be tried for lack of time—and also the bad—that his blood had tested HIV-positive and that he’d been infected by Heidi.

Some of the other interesting angles to the story include the issue of racism. The whole county had just one black person and so the racism portrayed wasn’t the usual white against black, but white against brown: Between the Anglo residents of Fredericksburg and the mostly illegal Mexicans, living in a barrio (slum) part of town and doing menial jobs for very low wages. There is the issue of sports as big business and how kids were taught by society via the TV and movies to cheat to win at all cost, if they could get away with it. Another is the issue of how the town was run by German descendants who would go to any extent to keep outsiders out. There is segregation in the kids’ schools, with Anglo and Mexicans being taught separately. Then there were two female friends that moved into town years before. They lived together and did nothing to dispel the false rumor they were lesbians, but only for selfish reasons—not wanting the lonely farmers to bother them for wives. Running through most of the book was the discovery by Beck that he had failed in his duty as husband to his wife and father to his children while the wife lived, as he now has to read how the wife told his father via email the story of their lives, her sickness and her evaluation of him.

August 10, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel last published in 2008; ISBN 928-1-84744-070-9.

Master and Servant

A sad story about growing up in a strict missionary school and about colonial rule in Kenya. While detailing the hardships of growing up in a strict religious setting, it is more a story of love between the estranged wife of an infamous black man and his hard-working but sad servant, told from a boy’s viewpoint.

The servant had placed his life in the master’s hands at a time the white authorities were looking for him for the murder of a cruel but white man. So when the master learned about the love affair, he gave him away to the white authorities. However the pain of the affair made him nearly strangle his wife, and shortly led to his death.

July 24, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel first published in 1979. Picture source: Google Images.

Dead-Bang

Based on a movie of same title with screenplay by Robert Foster and starring Don Johnson. It’s Christmas time but for homicide detective Jerry Beck it’s not the best of times, as he’s just had a divorce. When a store is robbed, its manager shot, and a patrolling cop is brutally murdered the same night, he is assigned to find the killer. His initial query of the police database gives him Bobby Burns as suspect #1. He storms the Burns residence. John, Bobby’s younger brother who is supposed to be attending college, couldn’t tell him much, but he forces a con that ran from the house to reveal that Bobby and some friends had headed out of town. Then the chase for Bobby begins. The FBI is alerted.

As things go on, Beck realizes that Bobby isn’t alone, that he is actually a member of a white supremacy group, and that a convention of such groups is about to take place where they’d elect a common leader. He is very furious and for some reasons wants to catch up with Bobby at all costs, particularly after he nearly kisses death at the hands of Bobby and his pals.

The chase culminates at a secluded residence on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado, where the convention is about to hold. Assisted by a police chief named Dixon and his men, Beck is able to storm the residence and disarm the guards and their masters. They could not find Bobby and his pals at first until they realize the existence of subterranean facilities. This is where they discover a huge armory of lethal weapons and this is where the final shoot-out takes place, that leads to the death of Bobby, his pals, as well as Bobby’s brother John who had actually been responsible for the initial robbery and cop murder.

One of the things I liked about the story is the way Dixon, the chief of police in Boulder, Colorado turned out to be a black person, and with all the skills usually reserved for whites, like piloting a helicopter. Then there was the hero Beck’s revelation of how his great-granddaddy had married his part-negro farm worker after emancipation, to debunk the racist Gebhardt’s thinking that he was as “white” as himself.

July 24, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1989.

Small Island

Set in Jamaica and England in the 1920s up to 1948, this is a powerful story on discrimination, of whites towards blacks in England and to a lesser extent between the color/social classes in Jamaica. Hortense Roberts, Gilbert Joseph and Michael Roberts are the black Jamaicans, England-bound for war against Hitler and later for a better life. Queenie and Bernard are the typical white English. Each tells his or her story in first person.

Michael and Gilbert are both in the war, but Michael’s plane is shot down in France and he is taken for dead by the family. Both come across Queenie in England at different times while her husband Bernard also away to the war is yet to return two years after. In her loneliness, Queenie falls for Michael’s seduction, and their three-day romance gets her pregnant. With Michael gone, Queenie tries her best to lose the baby but none works. So she resorts to tying up her belly and breasts to conceal them from prying eyes, until the very day she gives birth, to a colored boy.

This event is a very unexpected climax, especially as Bernard has finally seen it fit to return home, and Hortense and Gilbert now married are finding life in England difficult due to racism. It is to Hortense that Queenie turns to get the baby delivered, and surprisingly all go well. And then there is a powerful emotional ending in which Queenie has to beg Hortense and Gilbert to keep the baby because being whites she and Bernard could not face a future of raising a black child amidst a sea of prejudiced white neighbors.

July 23, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 2004. Picture source: Google Books.

The Burma Legacy

The detective story is woven around two old men who met in Burma in World War II, a Japanese soldier who led the capture and torture of a British soldier. Fifty years later the Japanese man has become the head of a rich corporation while the British has become the leader of a Buddhist commune. The Japanese man in efforts to make amends with countries they might have wronged during the war is leading the construction of auto factories both in Burma (now called Myanmar) and England. But the British man has authored a book in which he vowed to take his pound of flesh from the Japanese man. And on learning about the planned take-over and rehabilitation of the British factory, writes to The Times newspaper voicing his hatred. The letter was not published, but the Secret Service got sufficiently worried, particularly as the man disappeared shortly after. Detective Sam’s mission now is to find him and stop him before he commits a terrible blunder that would affect British economy.

 Linked to this is another subplot about an Australian beauty out to track an ex-secret service man who’s gone bad and now was involved in drug dealing in the South East. Failing to catch him when Sam went to assist her, it was not without surprise that the old men run into each other again in Burma. It turned out the drug runner also knew the British old man and the old man had recruited him to help him kidnap the Japanese old man. Things work out somehow in the end. The British old man’s grouse was really that the Japanese man knew he’d been a coward and had given out information following some beatings. It was his guilt for this that had him hating the Japanese thereafter, not that the man really committed atrocities against him like he claimed in his book. Both old men however got killed by the drug runner, who in turn is captured eventually.

July 23, 2015. Review initially written in 2004. Novel first published in 2002. Picture source: Google Images.

The Chicken Chasers

A flirtatious and well-connected old lady decides to take revenge on the one man who has not given in to her sexual approaches, by having him removed from his position in an international organization. She gets one of her lovers who happens to be the head of state to consent to her wishes and thereafter gets to represent the country at the crucial summit of the organization where the re-election of the secretary-general would be decided. On learning that she was going to ask for the resignation of the SG, other delegates and even the chairman of the organization lost no time in planning for the successor, and this is where the title comes in: Chasing chickens translated to scheming for the post of SG.

After another encounter with the man however the lady realizes that she could not really hate him and in fact loved him more. So she decides not to dethrone him, secretly flies back home to get the head of state to change his mind, and when she attends the final meeting, dumbfounded everyone by announcing her government’s recommendation of the man for another term. An interesting sarcasm on West African military governments and international politics.

July 23, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1980. Picture source: Google Images.

Disclosure

A corporate power play between two ex-lovers. On one side is Meredith Johnson, beautiful, ambitious, ready to do anything to win the powers that be and move ahead. Then there is Tom Sanders, hard-working and capable, one-time her lover who moved city after their relationship hit the rocks on account of her infidelity. He’d nearly forgotten about her, gotten married with two kids. Several years later the high-tech multi-location company they are both working for is about to be secretly acquired by a conservative organization. But instead of Sanders getting promoted as division head, it is Meredith from another location that got the job and so arrived once more to come in contact with him, this time as his boss.

The very first day she arrived, she goes after Tom in the evening, trying to seduce him, only to claim the next day that he sexually harassed her. But rather than accept to be transferred out of town as a result of the false accusation, Tom decides to fight back, hiring a top-notch lawyer, Louise Fernandez, to represent him in a corporate sexual harassment and ill-treatment action. The battle has just begun.

After several tense days of exchanging fire, it then begins to make sense what really was happening. The big boss Garvin was backing Meredith only because it was she that found the buyer for his company. She had schemed to get Tom fired or paid off, so she could take the job he should have gotten. Her attempt at seduction on the very first day and the subsequent false accusation was part of her plan to do this. And she nearly succeeded. But in the last few climactic chapters her scheme was exposed to Tom, especially by a character in their Malaysian office who sent him evidence he needed to effectively challenge her.

A very good read, a bit similar to Airframe in plotting and characterization.

July 22, 2015. Review initially written in 2012. Novel first published in 1993; this Ballantine Books edition being published in 1994; ISBN 0-345-39105-5.

Mine Boy

This is a simple but interesting story about the life of common black people in segregated Johannesburg in South Africa. The main character is Xuma, a young man who arrived the city from a village in the country. He was housed by Leah, a strong black woman who was in the risky business of selling beer, something that was forbidden for blacks, and the people in Leah’s house were like his new family. He fell in love with Leah’s niece Eliza who was ambivalent toward him because he did not go to school and did not do things the white way. He gets a job at a mine, where he became very popular. His white boss (Red One) was friendly toward him but he did not trust white people beyond working for them, more so since his love didn’t seem to like him because of his lack of white values. A good part of the book dwelt around his pursuit of happiness and Leah’s beer selling business and the crowded life in the ghetto settlement.

There were many things he did not understand, such as how a responsible man could fall so low as to be a drunk always, or why the eyes of miners were empty like sheep’s. It’s when his girlfriend Eliza finally leaves him to some other city that he really begins to grow up emotionally. Shortly before this Leah’s closest male friend died which had its drain on her. And after Eliza went, Leah was shortly arrested for selling beer and sentenced to 9 months. Xuma did not know how to take all these things and he was on the verge of turning into another sheep when his white boss had a very crucial talk with him. Red let him spill the anger he’d been containing toward white people whom he saw as the source of all the bad things that had happened to him. Red told him that he should fight back and that he must think like a man first before thinking like a black man. It was this message that carried the story till the end.

Shortly after their talk there was an accident at the mines and when the mine manager asked the miners to get back in, Xuma said they should not until structures were put right. This turned into a confrontation and Red One was on his side. The police were called and Xuma saw them beating his own boss who was white as well as the black miners. He runs away but could not forget the voice of his boss telling him not to run. He tells his friends what happened but when they advised him to go to another city he tells them that he had to join his boss at the police station and that he wanted to tell the white people how the blacks felt about their being mistreated. Like a hero, his friends praise him for having the courage to do this and this is where the story ends.

July 22, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1946. Picture source: Google Books.

The Devil’s Alternative

An Englishman of Ukrainian father, and a secret Ukrainian freedom fighter of fanatical convictions, battles to draw world attention to the Soviet suppression of nationalists in its republic of Ukraine. The first plot sees him successfully make contact with an escaped Ukrainian nationalist who was rescued nearly dead on a raft near the coast of Turkey. He then goes to Ukraine, meets up with the other nationalists and—with others—helps them procure hardware for an operation targeted at showing that the Russians were not invincible, the assassination of the KGB chief. This operation goes smoothly and the assassination is carried out. But the next operation, to give a news conference in Israel to shame Russia by announcing the assassination, does not quite succeed.

Two Jewish-Ukrainian men successfully hijack a Russian plane forcing it to land in Germany. Another set of men led by the same Englishman hijack a brand new oil tanker laden with 1 million tons of crude oil in the North Sea. They threaten to spill the crude and murder the crew with bomb explosions unless the two men held in Berlin were allowed unfettered passage to Israel. Then the real drama and anxiety begins.

The president of the US has to make a decision when the Russians declare they won’t sign a nuclear disarmament treaty just negotiated if the terrorists’ demands were met and the two men were allowed to get to Israel. The Russians want to save face without explaining things to the US president, although the US president does discover their dilemma. Thedevil’s alternativesthe US president has to consider each would lead to deaths: Give in to the terrorists, and war with Russia—or at least more military spending—would be imminent. Give in to Russia, and the tanker would be destroyed with oil spills affecting England and several European nations.

Eventually a tricky solution is adopted. The oil tanker hijackers are made to think their demands would be met. The two men are allowed to Israel. But they were secretly drugged with timed poison capsules that were programmed to release the poison into their blood after several hours. The tanker hijackers are fooled, and once they see their compatriots safely arrive in Israel they bade goodbye to the tanker, and make to escape. But neither they nor their Jewish colleagues live to see the end of the day. The Russians are happy and the Americans too.

July 19, 2015. Review initially written in 2009. Novel first published in 1979 by Hutchinson, this Transworld Publishers (Corgi Books) edition being published in 1990, ISBN 0-552-11500-2.

The Minister’s Daughter

This is a brief but interesting story about societal change in Nigeria that has a ring of the first military coup. It brightly illustrates the corrupt and affluent lifestyle of a rags to riches minister, who lived in a luxuriant haven among a mass of suffering poor people, and had contempt for the have-nots. In contrast his daughter was against the changed corrupt life and his white mistress, and fought him to show sympathy with the poor people.

When a coup takes place the new rulers come to arrest the minister. While he and his mistress are afraid and frantic for an escape path, his daughter is more concerned for the well-being of a poor boy whom her father had caused to be flogged. An ill-treated servant hatches a plan, for the minister’s escape on one part (the minister is to be disguised as a beggar and be singing with some beggars when the soldiers come), and for his own revenge on the minister and his mistress on the other (the minister turned beggar is to perform some wonderful tricks for the soldiers—cleaning a pimple on his ass with his mouth while in the nude, and he would also take the mistress to bed or else...) Unfortunately, the coup is short-lived: The major that started it is shot, the vengeful servant threatened with castration and the joyful masses are sent back to their gloomy old lives.

July 16, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1975. Picture source: Google (Images).

The Day Before Midnight

The span of the plot is a little more than sixteen hours, from 7 am to 12 midnight. It begins with the kidnapping of a welder in the early hours of the morning, followed shortly with the forceful take-over of the most secret and most potent missile silo in the US by an armed group. As the story unfolds, we find out that the armed group is Russian and their success in taking over the silo was due to vital information passed to their leader by the frustrated wife of the man who designed the facility, however believing their leader was Jewish like her.

It soon becomes obvious the motive for the take-over: To launch the missile against Russia’s military targets, which will force the Russians to launch all they’ve got against major American cities; in addition a bomb would go off simultaneously in Washington so as to murder American leadership and vital organizations. In the end Russia will live to inherit the new world after the demise of America, or so they expected.

Every second now is like a day as American military and special forces join hands to try to regain access to the site and prevent the launch. The race to midnight is long and thrilling. The ending is a dramatic success as the launch of the missile which actually commenced is eventually aborted at the last moment. And on the other hand the setting off of the nuclear bomb right inside the Russian Embassy though also started could not be concluded.

Ironically, the fate of the world eventually depended on Walls, a barely literate convicted black man and ex-Vietnam recruit, and a Vietnamese refugee woman, both of them known as tunnel rats, to get inside the launch control center from the bottom of the mountain. It was Walls who eventually aborted the launch under the instructions of the genius of a designer of the site who was immediately shot by the remaining Russians fighting for their lives. And on the other side, it took a fat alcoholic Russian just turned by CIA agents, to stop the bomb from going off in the Russian Embassy, after taking two bullets from the woman who set it off, a woman he thought he loved and had always told him she loved him, after killing the woman; in his pain as the countdown continued and not knowing what to do he turned to his vodka which he later poured on the timing device which shortcircuited it to achieve the desired aim anyhow.

July 16, 2015. Review initially written in 2001. Novel first published in 1989. Picture source: Goodreads.com.

Dear Future

This is the story of a village family in a poor unnamed South American republic that touches on the inter-racial mix of the people and the dirty politics of the leaders. Substitute the races with tribes and the story could have taken place in any tropical African country.

It is written as a series of loosely-connected stories, beginning with the accidental cutting in the head of one of two boys whose parents have left behind (Red Head). No one knows where the father is. Later we learn that the mother had been employed by the President as campaign secretary and sent to England to cook up some voters for the President. In the third part of the book we read about her and the three sons she had with him and the love affair with a Pakistani that didn’t quite work out.

The first and second parts of the book occurred in the village named Ariel. The boy’s head healed. His uncle Wheels ran a bike race and narrowly lost. Another uncle Bounce beat an unbeatable wrestler working for the President’s campaign, and the President’s supporters attacked the family in the night. Apparently, the two boys were killed or seriously wounded in the attack. Then there were more insight into the political campaign tactics for the election. The book ended with a series of thoughts from Red Head either from the land of dreams or the land of the dead.

July 16, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel first published in 1996. Picture source: Goodreads.com.

White Teeth

A long and often funny story dealing with immigration in the UK, particularly the problems faced by Asian and African immigrants, ending with a rather scientific twist, biogenetics. It starts with Archibald Jones (white English) and Samad Iqbal (Bangladeshi), friends joined by the first World War in Europe fighting for Britain, now in their forties in North London. They are both married recently to young ladies, Archie’s being Clara, the only daughter of black Jamaican immigrant parents. The story then runs backwards and forwards tracing different generations of their families: Samad’s great-grandfather Pande that was supposed to have started a failed mutiny against British colonial forces in the then-India; Clara’s mother Hortense and her own mother Ambrosia who was impregnated by a white British civil servant in Jamaica; the lives of their children, Irie Jones on the one hand, and identical twins Magid and Millat Iqbal, from birth to their late teens. Though from rich families in Bangladesh, in the UK, Samad can do nothing but work as head waiter in a restaurant while his wife sews away all day. Treated with humor are such issues as cultural identity, assimilation, homosexuality, Christianity (The Jehovah Witnesses in particular), Islam, juvenile delinquency, teenage social life, the violence meted out to foreigners by whites, religious fundamentalism, etc.

When Irie and Millat are caught in school with marijuana, a new phase begins in the story, the introduction of the Chalfen family, who thereafter influence the rest of the plot. Caught with the two is the innocent Joshua Chalfen who however lied that he was a dealer in the substance. So the two get sent to Joshua’s family as a sort of social experiment. For Irie, the experiment pays off as the Chalfens help her regain her nearly-lost academic bearing, but for Millat, the experiment did not pay back as much, as he became more and more violent and sexually promiscuous, eventually joining up with a Muslim group. It is Millat who got sent back to Bangladesh by Samad in a failed attempt to Islamize him, that gets very close to Marcus, the head of the Chalfen family and a genetic scientist. From mail correspondence, Millat is brought back to the country where he lives and works with Marcus who decides to fund his university education. Marcus Chalfen’s experimental project called FutureMouse, a genetically-modified mouse that he could control, brings the story to a climatic conclusion as different groups plot against it for different reasons.

July 16, 2015. Review initially written in 2006. Novel first published in 2000 by Hamish Hamilton, this Penguin edition being published in 2001. Picture source: Goodreads.com.

Zanzibar

The story is set mainly in Dar-es-salaam and Zanzibar and is based on the bombing of American embassies in Dar-es-salaam and Nairobi in 1998. It discusses reasons for the rise of groups like Al-Qaida such as the apparently unfair treatment of Muslims by the US, the initial US backing of the Taliban in Afghanistan in their push against the Russians during the Cold War, the fear by Muslims of domination by the “unbelieving” US leading to the desire to get the US out of the middle east once the Russians had been chased out of Afghanistan. There is a discussion of the inequalities of nations in the new world order and how poverty creates a breeding ground for religious fundamentalism.

The plot revolves around Nick, a Greek American who takes a contract job in Zanzibar protecting the marine environment, Miranda Powers and a recent recruit at the US Embassy in Dar-es-salaam. Once the two meet in Dar, they fall for each other. Then there is Jack Queller, a secret service man that was supposed to have trained Osama Bin Laden when the going was good with the US. Due to some power tussle his warnings about the danger of Al-Qaida are not taken up initially. Then on the other side are the al-Qaida men represented by a ruthless Zayn, a Palestinian whose family had been murdered by Israelis, their leader “Mr Sam” whom he keeps in touch with via satellite phone, and a Zanzibari recruit who ended up shooting Zayn once he worked out that his own parents were murdered not by Americans but by him. Thrown in to assist Miranda and Nick is a Ralph Legatt, a British clove farmer on Zanzibar with some interest in protecting turtle eggs from organized poachers. The plotting of the bombing missions, how they actually took place and what the US did in response were presented like in a movie.

July 13, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 2002. Picture source: Goodreads.com.

My Name Is Red

“In Istanbul, in the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day — in the European manner. But when one of the miniaturists is murdered, their master has to seek outside help. Did the dead painter fall victim to professional rivalry, romantic jealousy or religious terror?”

So the summary goes on the back page. It appeared that at the time, painting in Istanbul was influenced by Chinese and Persian ideas, with beautiful ladies being painted white with slanted eyes. Rather than the head artist of his palace, the Sultan commissioned an outsider, Enishte, to create the great book, and he in turn hires the artists individually from the palace and got them to work on different sections of each page at a time, not knowing what the others had done. The so-called “European manner” is painting in such a way that the object is represented as realistically as possible, so that it would be possible to identify the painted object just by looking at the painting. This idea seemed to go against the Islamic dictates at the time, or so some felt, because instead of Allah people would be tempted to worship the painted images. Another aspect of the European manner was perspectivism, showing things in the distance smaller. The accepted way of presenting objects in paintings at the time was to show them relative to their religious importance, so that only Allah was supposed to occupy center stage.

When Elegant, one of the painters, realizes that the book they were creating would go against the accepted religious norms, he gets frantic and worried to the point of alerting a radical sect. His fellow colleague then murders him to stop him, when they were alone. And not only this, the murderer also goes on to kill Enishte in a fit of rage, partly for his readiness to accept the European methods. The rest of the tale is about the unmasking of this one murderer on one hand, and a love affair between Shekure, the daughter of Enishte, and Black, a one-time artist under Enishte’s care whom he banished on learning that he was in love with his daughter.

There are quite a number of notable things about this novel. The narrative style is one: Each chapter presents a different character telling the story from his or her own point of view. Not only living people, but also the dead and animals, and ideas like Satan and the color Red. It appears the Turkish tradition was that each man’s name bore the suffix Effendi. So we see Enishte Effendi, Black Effendi, Elegant Effendi, and so on. Then there is the practice of homosexuality. With women carefully hidden away, beautiful boys were seen as good replacement for sex: Masters falling in love and fondling their beautiful male apprentices; the visits of men to beautiful male prostitutes for oral sex; even anal sex was not left out. And it all seemed acceptable in the society. Towards the end before the killer was finally sent running, there was open display of affection and kissing between the artists.

At the end, all appeared to have been resolved, with the exception of the completion of the Sultan’s book. The murderer was not only discovered, but Shekure’s hastily arranged marriage to Black was no longer threatened by her former husband’s brother Hasan. Hasan it was who beheaded the murderer, but he fled the city perhaps for mistaking the murderer for Black.

July 13, 2015. Review initially written in July, 2011. Novel first published in 1998 by Iletisim in Turkey; this Faber and Faber edition translated by Erdag M. Goknar being published in 2002; ISBN 0-571-21224-7.