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.

The African

The story traces the life of an African in the West African British colony, from village childhood to overseas college in the UK and back to political life in Africa. While in the UK he falls in love with a white South African who gets run down by her racist ex-fiancee. After a successful career as the prime minister of his newly-independent country he goes to South Africa to avenge the death of his ex-love, only to realize that he could only show pity and not rage at the last moment.

It is a story of contemporary African life in the first half of the twentieth Century—the clash between Western and African cultures, the milking of African colonies, the anti-apartheid struggle, the sharp contrasts of wealth and poverty in new African republics, dirty politics, the pan-African movement, and so on. The ending was rather too sudden and unexpected, considering the previous details concerning the hero’s trip to South Africa.

July 1, 2015. Review initially written in 1994. Novel first published in 1964. Picture source: Goodreads.com.

The Business

The Business is a multinational holding organization with roots dating back to Roman Empire times. Now it is the late 1980’s and Kate, the heroine, has risen rapidly in the hierarchy by her intelligent guesses about information technologies that have turned out correct and earning The Business lots of revenue from its investments. Now The Business is about to make an investment in Thulahn, a Third World country in the Himalayan mountains, that would literally result in taking over the running of the country.

Marriage by Kate to the Prince of Thulahn is one of the cards the leaders of The Business want to play. Only that she is really not in love with the Prince. Another twist to the tale is somebody within the firm is doing some personal business, cheating on The Business as it were. It is Kate’s job to find out who it is and take action before the guy succeeds in getting away with the loot. She succeeds in doing this. And also decides to marry the Prince, so as to be able to advise him and make sure the hawks in The Business do not do things that would be too detrimental to the people of Thulahn.

July 1, 2015. Review initially written in 2003. Novel first published in 1999. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

A Ride On the Whirlwind

This is a very readable thriller. It is a story depicting the mood of black people towards the oppressive apartheid government in South Africa in 1976. The demonstration started by school children in Soweto, sparked by the introduction of Afrikaans in black schools and a Bantu education policy, roused the black population and old freedom-fighters alike.

During the heat of the crisis, Mzi enters the country from Tanzania where he received military training on exile, with a mission to eliminate Batata, a vicious black cop in Soweto. He is introduced to Mandla, leader of the student demonstrators. Together they bomb Batata’s police station as an act of revenge for the children killed during the demonstrations as well as rebellion against white rule. They miss Batata however and henceforth it became their resolve to get the man.

Through a careless act by one of the members of Mandla’s group there was an explosion in the house they used as a hide-out. An informer gave the police the details and the place was under siege by the police, who arrested everyone they found. Their prime suspect Mandla remained elusive. Later he fled the country, leaving Mzi to eliminate Batata. Mzi accomplished this mission but then was forced on the run to Swaziland to escape arrest.

As well as following the activities of the student group there are insights into the torture and manipulation in the prisons of everyone detained. One of the student demonstrators was killed in cold blood by the police interrogators when they couldn’t get him to talk, and this they recorded as an act of suicide! The story also showed the feelings of both races toward each other: The black people in Soweto called their white oppressors dogs in contempt, while the whites felt it would take a thousand years for blacks to catch up with them.

June 19, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1981. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).