Elizabeth Costello

Elizabeth Costello is a divorced old Australian woman that has lived a life of writing. She is famous, though this fame has come at a price: Two marriages, neglecting her kids when they were young, not enjoying life. This story is written as a series of ‘lessons,’ each one taking a look at an episode in her life as of late: Winning a price and being invited to accept the price in an American college, going to the honorary degree award ceremony of her sister in South Africa, being on a cruise ship to entertain and educate the passengers, going to a seminar in Amsterdam. There is usually a speech or lecture to be given, either by her or her associates in each lesson. It is a look at her own sort of soul searching on the life of a writer that she has led.

The next to last lesson curiously has her somewhere in the after-life, attempting to pass through some gate to which she was barred. She is asked by the gate-keeper to make a statement about her beliefs in writing before she could be admitted. But she feels as a writer she can not hold on to beliefs, her profession demands that she simply pass on whatever messages come to her.

A rather interesting fact gleaned from the book is that while the French eat frogs, the Chinese eat almost anything. A man with a Nigerian name was in the same cruise ship with Elizabeth and it turned out they’d been lovers ages before. The Nigerian Amos Totuola’s novel The Palmwine Drunkard was referred to in this lesson.

March 29, 2015. Review initially written in 2007. Novel first published in 2003, this edition by Secker & Warbug, ISBN 0-436-20616-1. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Ikenga

The tale (in Igbo language) was set as from the late 1940s. It is the story of Ndukwe, a converted devout Christian and, more particularly his only son Okechukwu who was supposed to have been born with a ‘strong hand.’ After a childhood of fame and infamy, Okechukwu changed for the better at conclusion of secondary school and for a while things moved too easily for him. At 21 he’s got a good job at Owerri, a wife (married for him by his parents) with 2 kids, a house of his own in his village and even a car given to him by his employer thanks to his soccer skills and good personality. So you are left wondering what the ‘strong hand’ would lead him to, since a dibia woman had prophesied that he would end up killing a man, after Ndukwe refused to have him undergo some preventive rites by her called ike aka.

Then suddenly, Okechukwu’s outstanding good fortunes nose-dived, to such an extent he no longer saw reason to continue living. His two kids died within a month. His dad finally put aside his Christian reluctance and visited a dibia about this. The dibia said it was agwu ikenga that was responsible, that Okechukwu had to go through the ichi ikenga rites to avoid further misfortune. But Okechukwu decided to postpone the rites and be with the wife who was in labor. And to cap it all, even the wife died also during childbirth. Fed up with life, he ended up joining the army at war (the Nigerian civil war of the late ’60s), willing death to take him as well. He conducted himself responsibly in the war and led several successful missions.

 After surviving the war, in the last couple of chapters Okechukwu finally went through the ichi ikenga rites, after which all his misfortunes stopped. Some of the things the initiates had to go through during the rites were rather scary, like having hot oil poured in your eyes and also having to dip your hand into a pot of boiling oil. At the end of it, those that survived then had the powers of dibia. Each would have a shrine where he would regularly make sacrifices, like at the beginning of each new yam festival.

His parents again married a wife for him. He went to ala Bekee (probably UK) with her to study medicine and returned after seven years with another two kids, built a hospital in his village, worked as a doctor at Onitsha (dishing out both Western and Igbo cures as required) before he was appointed a health minister by the government.

The moral of the tale seems to be that certain Igbo customs and traditions have to be upheld, regardless of Christianity. The book is full of Igbo proverbs and expressions, some I understood, some I could guess at, some I didn’t quite understand. One of these was añuna ngwo na nkwu na-abia, something that is mentioned in one of the songs of a popular Igbo rapper some years back. I used to wonder what this expression meant exactly until I saw the context it was used in the book: The best is yet to come.

March 27, 2015. Review initially written in 2009. Novel first published in 1985, this Paperback Publishers edition having ISBN 978 2432 56 3.

Space

This is a fictional account of America’s foray into space, from the mid 1940s when German scientists were secretly smuggled into the country, to the landings on the moon in the 1960s, to the late 1970s when an un-manned landing on Mars was accomplished, preceding what looked like a decline of interest in space. Quite interesting to read.

Going hand in hand with the pursuit of space (in a race against the Soviets), is the story of a brilliant man born Martin Scorcella. He is always reading the nation’s mood and thinking of ways to capitalize on this financially. For doing something he shouldn’t have he was kicked out of college. He goes to California where under the name of Dr Strabismus he establishes the Universal Space Associates, peddling stories about the arrival in the country of ‘little green men’ from space and their plans to take over the government. Then he moves on to a fake university that sold degrees by mail order. (It appears in California, anything goes.) Finally he ends up establishing a religious movement which even goes to the extent of opposing science and geology.

One of the most interesting characters is Stanley Mott, in his two worlds of science and religion. While the scientist believed in the Big Bang and evolution, his minister father believed in creation by God and his job was to try and reconcile the two. His conclusion was that religion’s purpose was to instill in man the ethics to keep him from going astray. He regarded biblical accounts as poetic rather than being factual, so that the 7 “days” required to create the world (in the book of Genesis) should be taken to mean periods of millions of years. He even had to come to terms with the reality of his son being gay, realizing he still had to show him love, and defending him against religious fanatics quoting from the same book of Leviticus chapter 20 as they did, recalling other instances (not just man lying with a man) that were supposed to be punished with death, like adultery and cursing your parents.

March 27, 2015. Review initially written in 2009. Novel first published in 1983, this Ballantine Books edition having ISBN 0-449-20379-4.

Obi

This is a good story set in Igboland during the 1940s, in a society that was divided between traditional customs and newer Christian beliefs and practice. Joe and Anna who’d been married without children return to the village from the city so Joe could uphold his father’s obi as he was the only son. They are both well-off and hard-working however they were given a hard time in the village for not having a child. Joe was advised to marry another wife but he refused as this was against his Catholic religion.

They went to see a native doctor but in the end Anna refused to take the medication part of which was a charm that was against their religion. The story had a mixed ending. Anna was finally pregnant, having received an operation in a hospital set up by the Anglican church. However they both had to leave the village because Joe’s cousin’s wife died as a result of a beating she received from Joe in anger after she called him a castrated bull.

At this time the church was about two generations old in the land and World War II was in progress. The author’s accurate portrayal of the rivalry between the Catholic Church (referred locally as Fada), and the Anglican Church (referred to as Siemensi) both among children and adults, as well as the behavior of old women and the umuada, will make some people recall their early childhood lives in eastern villages. The people are basically the same now in the villages except that the church is no longer a stranger.

March 26, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1969. Picture source: AbeBooks.com.

Black Friday

Originally titled “Black Market,” this story opens with a terrorist attack on Wall Street, “the financial capital of the world.” No terrorist demands were made by the group calling itself Green Band, and for a long time there were no real clues as to their mission. The story closes with an epilogue that surprisingly sees the dozen “wise” men that had been manipulating American politics from the shadows being wiped out, or so readers are to believe.

In between is a web of history from the Vietnam war, economic terrorism, discovery of love between key actors, deception and murder. Written in a sort of entertaining prose that lets you know it’s just a story and not for real.

The key heroes and heroines as well as bad guys include chief villain Walter Trentkamp, head of CIA, that eventually turns out to be of Russian parentage and actually working for the Russians and was really the dreaded Russia-linked international terrorist known as Francois Monserrat.

Arch Caroll is America’s undercover anti-terrorist specialist missing his dead wife, who soon finds new love, and was among those to finally blow the CIA chief’s cover and find answers to the Green Band puzzle. Caitlin Dillon is the beautiful head of SEC and one of those safeguarding the stock market that was initially under attack. She happened to be in need of her knight in shining armor, who turns out to be Arch.

David Hudson is the perfect American hero who the secret dozen wise men decided to use to thwart an Arab attempt to take over the Western economic system as well as effect a change in the American presidency. Their first aim was achieved via the Green Band group, only at the end they failed to overthrow the government, and realizing they intended getting rid of him and his group of veterans that was Green Band afterward, Hudson went and fire-bombed the homes of each and every one of them at the end.

March 26, 2015. Review initially written in 2014. Novel first published in 1986, this Warner Books edition being published in 2000, ISBN 0-446-60932-3.

The Promised Land

This story explores family life and social conflicts in rural Kenya, beginning with a just-married couple, Nyapol the beautiful bride and Ochoma the hard-working groom. They have a narrow strip of hill-side land to farm but after hearing stories of fertile no man’s land in Tanganyika from successful people who had migrated there, he becomes dissatisfied with the family land and decides to move over with his wife. He ignores all pleas from his wife, ageing father and other family members not to go, and they move. As told, he does get to mark out an unbelievably large portion of fertile land on arrival in Tanganyika, the wife produces three children, and he suddenly becomes wealthy.

But then an envious old tribalistic evil medicine man who feels the arriving Luo people are arrogant bastards wages ritual warfare against him and his home. He contracts a strange illness that after running into the forest and being lost for weeks, no other medicine man could cure. The “white man’s medicine” also could not cure him. His children and dependable dog begin to fall ill as well. But then as if by miracle an uninvited medicine man turns up, and succeeds in curing him. But he is promptly advised by the medicine man—and virtually forced—to abandon all the wealth he had acquired and flee back to his village, to avoid further attacks from the evil man’s front.

March 23, 2015. Review initially written in 2006. Novel first published in 1966. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Shane

This is the story of Shane, a mysterious but righteous man who is trying to part ways with a violent past, like he used to be a law enforcer or gunman who got tired of killing. He arrives in this little settlement—so small it didn’t even have a sherif—in Wyoming in ’89 (probably 1889), right into a conflict over land. On one side is a group of farmer and rancher settlers along one side of a river; on the other is a crafty Mr. Fletcher, owner of a big ranch on the other side of the river who has some claims on the land taken up by the settlers.

When Shane rides up, he intends to just pass by. But he is taken up by Starrett, the leading settler whose opinions the others respect. Starrett convinces Shane to stay a while, working with him, though it appears Shane’s acceptance is more because of Starrett’s wife who takes an immediate liking to him.
After Fletcher wins a big contract to supply beef, he goes all out to get the settlers to leave so he could have their land for his grazing grounds. With Shane on his side, Starrett and the settlers refuse his sale offers. Then Fletcher goes and hires a killer with the intention of taking out the settlers on the flimsiest excuse. It is now left to Shane to put an end to the killing days of Fletcher’s assassin, even if it means his reliving a past he wants to escape.

This is all told from the viewpoint of Starrett’s young son Bob, to whom Shane became a hero the moment he set foot in their valley.

March 23, 2015. First read in junior high and then again in 2010 when this review was initially written. Novel first published in 1949 by Houghton Mifflin, this Bantam Books edition being published in 1980, ISBN 0-553-14475-8.

Estrangement

Set in Port Harcourt and its environs at the end of the Biafran war, it is a typical example of how the war affected the lives of ordinary people. Its conflicts were the results of the war—the separation of families during raids, the extreme hunger, poverty and death, women at the mercy of sex-starved soldiers.

Before the war Alekiri was happily married to Ibekwe. They were separated during the capture of Port Harcourt by the Nigerians, and she was on the verge of being raped when a superior officer (Dansuku) rescued her, then afterwards made her his mistress. She was grateful for his kindness and they had a daughter. Now the war is over and Ibekwe returns with their lean daughter. When he heard that his wife was living with a soldier and even had a child for him he was mad. He beat her up and refused to take her back. Alekiri became hurt and confused as she really loved Ibekwe. Dansuku wanted to marry her but she refused in the hope that Ibekwe would cool down and accept her.

Ibekwe did cool down, but it was after his next marriage broke down about three years later. By then Alekiri had recovered enough to hold her ground. A military coup had taken place (like the one that ushered in Murtala Mohammed in real life), but not long after another coup occurred (akin to Dimka’s) which though not successful caused the death of the head-of-state. Dansuku was arrested and barely escaped death by firing squad, as he had not been involved. He decided to retire from the army and when he asked her to marry him again she finally gave in.

March 20, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1986. Picture source: Goodreads.com.

Manchild In the Promised Land

An autobiography (with names of most people changed) about growing up in the black ghetto of Harlem in the 1940s and ’50s, about survival in the streets, with all the vices—drugs, violence, prostitution, gambling. Infuriation with the dad drove Claude out of Harlem to Greenwich Village, and probably saved him from the fate that befell the majority of its youth: jail or untimely death.

Claude and his generation were the kids of poor Southern sharecroppers, people used to being treated like servants by most whites. So while they were content to take low jobs and play subservient roles, these kids were not. As they watched their parents preaching for them to be good and yet not laying a reliable example for them to follow, these kids revolted by doing things their own way, stealing, fighting, using drugs, skipping school. They spent lots of times in juvenile centers, some even preferring such places to home, where they were either not wanted or not cared for. As they grew up, they resented being called “boys” and “girls” like they saw their old people being called by whites, they resented working long hours for what looked like meager pay, compared to the quick cash that came from activities like dealing in drugs or turning different types of “tricks,” fraudulent means of getting money.

The level of violence that is depicted in this autobiographical makes it read like fiction to begin with. Claude was able to break out from this violence due to two reasons. He was smart. He met some nice influential people at a couple of the correctional facilities where he spent a lot of his young years. It was these people that made him realize life could be more than the street thing he was used to in Harlem, that eventually got him to go back to night school to get his high school diploma. And the positive change in him began with his moving out of Harlem, after he could no longer stand his dad in the same house.

For a long while the tale was about how drugs came to Harlem in the 50’s and took over the youth. How everyone had a drug user or addict in the family, or knew one. How the youth got wasted and died from their addiction, either through an OD (overdose) or some robbery in a bid to feed the habit. Then there were tales of different movements that came along, trying to solve the problem. The Coptic Christians that preached black superiority and a religion based in Ethiopia and a black Christ. Then came the Muslims preaching economic emancipation of blacks. Claude tried out all these ideas, from going to church to listening to the Muslims preach, but eventually none gave him the right answers he needed. When one Muslim convert was telling him about the need for blacks to revolt, he shot back that he’d already had his own revolution. That is, all the criminal activities he’d been into in his earlier days were forms of revolting against the status quo and the injustices in the system. And so he didn’t see a sense in calling for or being part of a movement that preached revolution.

There was this account of a love affair between Claude and a white Jewish girl, after he moved out of Harlem. The girl was all for making him happy and being a good friend and all, telling him her folks were not racists and would treat him like any other guy. Claude was reluctant at first, but then let himself be convinced and so gave the girl his love and his heart. And then a few months down the line, the girl suddenly disappeared. It turned out her parents were not as open-minded as she had thought, and so had sent her away to break up the relationship. Claude was heartbroken, and in his hurt decided to run back to Harlem, away from the white people.

By then he discovered Harlem had changed. Drugs no longer had the strong pull it used to. Even cops now did their jobs better, unlike in his younger days when they were more interested in protecting whites. And best of all, he came into contact with a black minister that really inspired him, one different from the other men of God he used to despise. It was this Minister that was instrumental in gaining him admission to college, in addition to also helping his younger brother.

It’s a tale of the shift in expectations and priorities between black Americans of the old generation and the new, in the Harlem of the 50’s. The old generation that emigrated from the South remembered the hardships of segregation down there, and so were more willing to stay in their expected places, doing lowly paying jobs, afraid to voice complaints to white landlords or bosses to avoid being thrown out. But the new generation had none of those southern setbacks. They saw no reason why they should go to church even when the preachers were crooks, saw no reason to take insults from whites lying low, and saw more reason to go to college and aim for higher positions in life.

March 19, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel first published in 1965 by The Macmillan Company, this being the Signet edition, ISBN 0-451-13445-1.

The Madness of Didi

This is a very well-written book of social conflict. The young village orphan boy Francis Ndidi-Agu, adopted by a priest (who anglicized his surname to Didi) and sponsored to a British education, was able to see the world with a new eye. He realized that in telling themselves they were white when their skin color was actually pink, and in going about brutalizing other peoples in the name of civilization, European culture seemed to be founded on some sort of madness. He divorced himself from his adopted family and refused to become a priest, causing his sponsor priest to write his village that he was dead. He decides to illustrate this madness by announcing that he was GREEN and acting like he owned everybody, and to the extent of killing six white people in cold blood.

He wanted to deceive society by claiming to be mad, and see what would happen in court. But his real reason was found out by a student psychiatrist who was interviewing him, and unfortunately the secret service had used her without her consent, and Didi’s intent was out before the court hearing. He was afterwards jailed for several years, part of them spent in mental prisons. He was released from prison through pressure from friends and deported back to Nigeria, where he was immediately attracted to a father-less family of a mother, son (Obi) and an adopted daughter. He got a teaching job at a college and became a hero of student activism on the one hand, and an enemy of a wealthy politician that saw him as the cause of his daughter’s rebellion, and eventually arranged for his home to be set afire at night with Didi trapped inside.

Most of the book was about his arrival in his village and the villagers’ initial assumption that he was a ghost, his growing attraction to Obi and his family, his popularity in the village, schools and country, his confrontation with the Ndumezays, and his death, told in first person by Obi himself, probably after his own return from England under the sponsorship of one of Didi’s friends. The real meat of the story is in the form of a manuscript about Didi’s experience in England which was sent to him in the village by his friend, and which he let Obi read when he was about to die.

March 19, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1980. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

The Sinister Pig

The “Sinister Pig” title comes from the French phrase cochon sinistre or porc sinistre, for the boss pig in the sty that prevents other animals from taking a bite. And in human terms, it is a reference to the key villain in the story, Rawley Windsor. Rawley is already rich and powerful, with politicians and law enforcement people under his pay. But he is not yet content.

He wants to go for more wealth—clandestine cocaine-induced wealth—than he already has. So while backing the lobby to stop Congress from legalizing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes—because it would threaten his profits from drug pushing—he is secretly setting up a system of using abandoned gas pipelines running from Mexico to New Mexico, USA, to transport cocaine disguised as pigs—devices normally used to clean out pipelines. And he very nearly gets away with this.

Except a number of actors realize the menace he posed, particularly his bodyguard and jet pilot Budge C. de Baca, not only to society but to their own lives. So at the end, Rawley the sinister pig gets the bullet he’d intended for an intelligent but innocent Border Patrol cop Bernadette (Bernie) Manuelito. Quite interesting, and written with a touch of humor.

March 18, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel first published in 2003, this HarperTorch edition being published in 2004, ISBN 0-006-109878-7.

On Trial for My Country

A historical novel that depicts the tricky and dubious means by which Cecil Rhodes and his agents took over land ruled by the Matabele king Lobengula, raided the king and drove him off the land, in order to establish Rhodesia.

The landmark events leading to the demise of the king were introduced in two versions, from the point of view of Lobengula, and of Cecil and his agents. By the end it was obvious the land and people that became Rhodesia was taken from the king by force through un-Christian means with no regard to the feelings of the African owners. Seems similar to the acquisition of American Indian land by European settlers to form the USA.

March 18, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1966. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Fleshmarket Close

Set in Edinburgh, Scotland, this police detective story deals with the issue of asylum seekers and racial discrimination in Scotland. Knoxland is a council estate made up of four high-rise buildings and housing many immigrants. An immigrant is reported murdered and it is up to Inspector John Rebus to unravel why, amidst being given the hints for retirement.

Turns out the victim was a journalist who threatened to expose the evil practices of some big men in society. He was killed to keep him quiet. These evil big men are running a slavery system, keeping illegal immigrants in apartments obtained under false pretenses, and then carting them off to do different sorts of manual labor for peanuts.

Mixed in with this is the plot of a much-disliked rapist who on being released from jail is soon found dead in his bedroom. John Rebus’ colleague Siobahn is the one that helps untangle the mystery of his killer—his victim’s sister and/or her club manager boyfriend.

March 13, 2015. Review initially written in 2006. Novel first published in 2004. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Jagua Nana’s Daughter

Elizabeth Nene Papadopoulous. This is the name of the first and only daughter of Jagua Nana, a fashionable free woman who in the late 20th century Nigeria would have been daubed a Lagos Socialite or something like that. She was conceived and born in secrecy while Jagua was still a teenage schoolgirl: Jagua’s parents knew nothing of her and neither did her father, a Greek citizen working in the mines of Jos, know when he conceived her. Nick Papadopoulous had a mistress Kate, actually a Cameroonian making a living in Jos in the business of the high class sex workers. Nick wanted a child from her and since she could not give him one, she lured the innocent Jagua into a web that resulted in Nick getting personal with Jagua during one night of partying, that eventually got her pregnant. It was Kate that made sure the birth was a secret and then she and her live-in friend Sister Heide took to caring for the baby, until an ethnic crisis in Jos forced Jagua and her parents to flee, still living the baby with Kate. Kate then cemented her plan by telling Jagua the baby was killed during the riot months later, while on the other hand, she presented the baby to Nick as hers. So Nick finally married her.

That was the history. Now it is twenty-something years later and Liza Nene Papadopoulous who had lived and schooled in London was back in Nigeria in search of her real mother, after discovering that Kate that had pretended to be her mother was in fact not. It is a quite interesting story that throws up a number of issues of contemporary Nigerian city and rural life in the East: Rich Nigerian men with several wives including one referred to as “London wife;” the quest for the male child by these men; the ever-busy businessman traveling from one city to another; wives fighting it out with their husband’s girlfriend seen as rival, men fighting it out with their girlfriend’s men seen as rivals; judges that bend the law to suit governments in power; the poor conditions in police stations and the unprofessional conduct of the cops themselves; how justice was often denied the poor; smuggling, trafficking of young ladies as sex slaves though in this case it was from Cameroon to Nigeria; the rapid transformation of Nigerian cities like Jos; travelers from one part of the country to another and their need for a resting place in the middle of nowhere; border conflicts and how difficult it was to distinguish citizens living in border areas. The search by Nene for her mother on the one hand, and of Jagua for her daughter on the other, did not last too long. On one hand there was a chance sighting of Auntie Kate by Nene at a lecture organized by the Cameroonian Embassy in Lagos. And on the other Kate’s live-in friend Sister Heide who had not liked the manner Kate “stole” Nene from the mother finally revealed the secret to Jagua that her daughter did not die, prompting Jagua to begin the search on her part. They did meet and it was a happy ending for both of them.

March 10, 2015. Review initially written in 2012. Novel first published in 1986, this Spectrum Books edition being published in 1989, ISBN 978-246-043-5.

Feeding the Ghosts

The tragic story of Mintah, a black woman survivor of the slaveship Zong during the eighteenth century. The ship was loaded with over 400 slaves and heading for Jamaica. When some illness causes the death of some slaves and crew, the captain decides to minimize loss and maximize profit by throwing the sick into the sea.

Mintah was not sick but was also thrown into the sea for daring to speak up to the first mate whom she’d nursed while ill at a Danish fort on the African coast. She managed to climb back without being noticed and survived under cover with the aid of the cook’s assistant. She encouraged the slaves to rebel, which led to more severe punishment being meted out to her. A total of 131 slaves were thrown into the sea. Mintah was sold in Maryland.

The criminal action of the captain and his crew was challenged in a London court, but only because the insurers of the ship were asked to pay for the 131 slaves “lost” at sea. The judgement went in favor of the captain as the society regarded slaves as stock.

Mintah regained her freedom in Maryland, taught blacks to read and write, and later helped many
slaves escape to the North. Then she had to flee to Jamaica where she lived the rest of her life. Probably due to the ill treatment she received on the ship, she was unable to conceive children, and died in a fire that consumed her house.

March 6, 2015. Review initially written in 2000. Novel first published in 1997. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours

This is a story that contrasts the hero’s fifteen years of living in cities and particularly Lagos in a Nigeria of probably sometimes between 1945 and 1960, with the hunger, disease and poverty of rural village life in eastern Nigeria. It is a story highlighting the politics and lopsided justice system of a society on the change. And it is a story of a man’s sudden rise to success in Lagos, his misplaced values and the pursuit of sex, money and a flashy Jaguar to show off, and his immediate demise on the loss of the expensive car.

Onuma is the hero, a young man who dropped out from university in pursuit of money, and the sex and material wealth to be gotten from it. Fifteen years later, he’s bought a brand new Jaguar on loan, and he is making a trip to the village for the first time. There he and his car are celebrated by his parents and the villagers with days of feasting. Continuing the easy life though, he crashes the Jaguar into a gully, after an evening at a dance characterized by lots of drinking and food and a lot of sex. Then his downfall begins. Back in Lagos, he misappropriates money from his employers to purchase spare parts for the Jaguar, but by the time he gets back to the scene of the accident, it has been cannibalized. He dabbles into politics, and ends up killing his political colleague for his party-owned Mercedes car.

March 9, 2015. Review initially written in 1994. Novel first published in 1975 by Andre Deutsch, this Fontana/Collins edition being published in 1981, ISBN 0-00-614412-8.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

Based on a screenplay by Melissa Mathison, this is a story about a particular landing by an alien spacecraft in which one of their members got stranded. He was afraid of what the scientists who were after him would do to him and hid from them. But he was attracted to some kids that lived nearby, who became his companion and protector during his brief stay on Earth.

The kids hid him in a closet and supplied him things with which he constructed an equipment which he used to send messages “home,” as well as food. From a human point of view the being was ugly, three-feet tall, more like a large frog. But it had extraordinary powers, to heal wounds, telepathy, to make plants grow, make things float in the air, communicate with computers. Eventually he got sick and then the sky-watchers who originally spotted his craft discovered him. But after he appeared dead for a while he became alive again, was able to make contact with his spaceship, and through the aid of the kids again, got back to the site where the communication equipment had been kept and where the spaceship landed to pick him up.

March 6, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Work first published in 1982 by Sphere Books, this edition being published in 1983, ISBN 0-7221-5243-4.

The Constant Gardener

The “constant gardener” is Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Kenya whose wife Tessa has just been murdered by agents of KVH, a pharmaceutical firm that felt threatened by her activism. KVH has introduced a new wonder drug called Dypraxa that was supposed to be the answer to tuberculosis, but in very unethical manners: Using poor Africans as guinea pigs for testing without their learned consent, using money to buy certifications and suppressing negative assessments. While Tessa and a close friend that happened to be a black doctor were busy trying to expose the bad practices of distributors and manufacturers of the drug, her husband was content to be tending their home gardens and flowers, hence the title. But not for long after her death.

Because KVH has promised Britain a factory, the fact that Tessa the wife of a British diplomat was trying to undermine their drug became a sort of embarrassment to the British High Commission in Kenya. When she sent in documentary evidence of the malpractice connected with the drug, including evidence of the death of test cases, this was suppressed by higher authority. Along with Britain’s economic interest being at stake, the owner of ThreeBees, the sole distributor of the drug in Africa, also happened to be British with connections in government. So when Tessa was murdered, official British story was that her black doctor lover was the culprit, especially since the murder occurred while she was supposed to be with him, and he was not to be found afterwards. Police officers drafted to the case were unceremoniously withdrawn when they were getting too close to the real truth.

Justin was sent back to England after the murder, expectedly to recover in silence until the matter had died down. But instead of doing what was expected of him, he sets out to unravel the cause and agents of her death, going from Britain to Italy, Germany, Canada and finally Kenya and Sudan. Unfortunately, after escaping official and unofficial agents who went after him, after the reasons and agents responsible for his wife’s (and friend’s) murder were exposed, he willingly lets himself be killed in the end by the same agents that killed his wife. And the evil KVH went on to establish an office in London, while the owner of ThreeBees went on to be honored with a British lordship.

March 6, 2015. Review initially written in 2004. Novel first published in 2001. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Simisola

This story deals with racism, domestic violence, social services in the form of provision of jobs and financial support for the unemployed, illegal immigration and local politics, and was set in a small British town. There are two main interlinked sets of plots. The story began with the disappearance of the daughter of an elite Yoruba-British couple in the town. The search for Melanie Akande gets to an anticlimax when the cops mistake the body of another black girl for her, just because this other girl was black.

When Melanie is found alive and well (she really didn’t want her folks to know where she was), the heat now moved to this other dead girl; who was she and why was she murdered and buried in an unmarked grave? This second investigation brought the book to a conclusion when it was found out that the dead girl (Simisola) had been brought into the country illegally by a wealthy white couple in the town, who abused her sexually and physically and kept her locked up in their house, practically a slave. She’d been beat to death when her attempt to escape failed. The attempt to cover up her death led to the murder of another woman as well as attempted murder of a third.

March 3, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel first published in 1995. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

The Dirty Dozen

One of the best things about this historical novel is the author’s attempt to expose the stupidity and uselessness of being racially prejudiced. To start with, the author made Napoleon White, a black person, one of the prominent characters. White had gone to college where he’d gotten A’s and B’s. He had also been a football hero. He had enlisted in the Army where his brilliant performance earned him the rank of lieutenant. It was at this point that he had become a victim of racial injustice in a southern town. He had sought revenge and stabbed his attacker to death. He had been court-martialled and sentenced to death for murder.

But rather than let him hang John Reisman, the main character of the book, picked him to be among the dozen convicted men to be trained for a special mission in Europe during the second world war. Reisman, himself of Jewish descent, recognized the leadership qualities of White’s past and decided to rekindle them and make White a leader of the group (later nicknamed the Dirty Dozen). Ten out of the dozen men in this group were white. (The other member was a Ute Indian named Samson Posey.) The typical prejudiced white was a southerner named Archer Maggot. Maggot disliked White from the start. He was the one who made the first jeery remark about White the first time the men were brought together.

Compared to White, Maggot had no important leadership qualities. He was a minor academically, and his past had been a mixture of sexually corrupt activities. He had been convicted for rape. From the onset Maggot thought he could handle White like other “niggers” from his background. But as it were, he had been mistaken. The first time he made his remark—about whether White’s parents had been color-blind—he found himself challenged, and thrown down in a fight. Later, whenever he said anything purposely to offend White, White responded with an intellectual comment which Maggot usually didn’t understand. Sometimes White recalled a quotation from history; sometimes he imitated Maggot’s uneducated southern drawl, which infuriated Maggot. White usually got to lead the group during their training sessions and any attempt by Maggot to protest was met with a critical statement from their trainer (Reisman) or the other men, and sometimes hard punishment.

Maggot even found out the hard way that the Indian could play poker better than he. He tried to cheat but Posey caught him redhanded. When he wanted to fight, he got it. All his actions had been aimed at leading the other men against White’s leadership, but actually quite the opposite happened. The other men had no particular grudges against White and were willing to respect him as a leader. Some even turned against Maggot.

Eventually Maggot realized that his bigotry was getting him nowhere. He accepted White’s leadership though grudgingly. But if nothing else, he learned to keep his mouth shut as far as White was concerned.

March 3, 2015. Review initially written in 1985. Work first published in 1965. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Weep Not, Child

This story is a simple account of the effects of the struggle for black emancipation in Kenya on the lives of common black people, as well as the whites. It begins with the enrolment of a young boy at preparatory school, spans over a decade and ends with the unsuccessful attempt by the frustrated young man to hang himself, after losing his admission at school, most of his family, and the girl he loved to the struggle.

The story has a lot of social and political messages: about the hunger of Kenyans for education, the injustice of how whites systematically deprived blacks of their land; about white women not being different from black women sexually; the polygamous family system; the stupidity of ethnic distrust; how leaders are motivated by selfish interests rather than a higher moral belief; the senseless killings by both races; the lack of belief in God by some whites; the presence of love between children whose parents were enemies; the manipulation of blacks against each other by whites.

March 3, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel first published in 1964. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Ben, in the World

This is a sequel to The Fifth Child. Ben is 18 but looks about 35. Ben is huge and hairy with a violent sex drive. But in today’s world of men there is no one like him. He is a throw-back to an earlier ancient epoch in human history.

Unwelcome and unloved at home, he runs out, and falls from one company to another, from gangs, to a job where he is cheated, to a dying old woman that cares for him like a small boy, to a prostitute and her protector who use him and then dump him in France, to an American film maker who wants to use him and takes him to Brazil. When he finally realizes there are no living people like him except on rock drawings he decides to die rather than continue a life of suffering.

February 26, 2015. Review initially written in 2006. Novel first published in 2000. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Sunset at Dawn

This novel is based on the Biafran war from the Biafran perspective. There is no major plot; rather, selected characters representing different sections of the population of Biafra are followed from the onset of war to the dying days.

These include Dr Amilo Kanu with a Hausa wife named Fatima. During the course of the war Fatima lost her first son, and was transformed from a metropolitan woman with disregard for village life, her husband’s village-dwelling parents and their Igbo language, to a strong mature woman who had grown close to the lives of her parents-in-law, worked to save the hungry children and championed the cause of Biafra. Another prominent character is Bassey, a millionaire who lost everything from Enugu to Onitsha to Port Harcourt and nearly went crazy. The Biafran people were shown to be ingenious and brave generally and would have won the war if the Nigerians had not been backed by major European and American countries.

February 26, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1976. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).