Ubuntu

The title Ubuntu was explained midway into the book as the idea of the community being greater than each individual, which was held by traditional African societies. The book is a journey through the history of southern Africa with emphasis on the impact of white Dutch settlers on native peoples, especially the Bushman tribes.

It starts with accounts from the early 1800s after the settlers started arriving to appropriate the land and kill or enslave or drive off the native peoples. And it ends with accounts from the late 20th century with some independence and freedom won by countries of the region, including 1999 when majority rule finally was achieved in South Africa. In between are tales of conquest, intimidation and harassment by the whites, who interpreted the Bible to mean that black people were descended from Ham and so should be treated as unequal servants. There are tales of the Bushmen’s way of life and how they were driven further and further into harsh lands to escape massacres. There are several generations of white settlers and Bushmen.

Woven through the historical account is the story of Melanie, taken by the Bushmen as a baby after her parents were murdered on their farmhouse. She is raised by the Bushmen until she learns to speak their language, then was returned to her relations where she again learns another culture. This past with Bushmen was to affect her later in life in England, and it was by going back to reconcile with it that both she and her son Michael were able to put their life back in perspective.

May 28, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 2002. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Popcorn

The night a controversial Hollywood personality gets an Oscar for movie best director he is taken hostage by a couple of psychopaths that have been killing people across the US for no reason. They want to use the director as a cover for their crimes, to force him to explain that they’d been influenced by his movies, and thus escape the punishment of death. They demand for TV cameras and force the entire country to watch. Rather than take full responsibility for their actions, the director gets them to agree to a debate. In the process most of the hostages as well as one of the killers get killed when shootouts begin. Blame is shifted from place to place and several law suits are filed.

The story is about relating movies (art) and society (reality). Is a movie a mirror of society as claimed by the director, or is society shaped by movies, as most of the media reporting the director and the event tended to portray? It also touches the delicate work of policing an American city like L. A. with various racial and other interest groups, where punishment for crime have to be dealt with differently according to interest group, with references to the Rodney King riots and the O. J. Simpson trial.

May 4, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel first published in 1996. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Elina

Like the author’s previous books I’ve read, this is a social conflict story. Unlike those, this is not a story based on the black man’s anger. It’s more a story of a cunning plot to fight—during colonial times—what was seen as a legislation designed to stamp out one aspect of black African culture in favor of the practice in Europe and America, i. e. polygamy. It was actually previously titled Winds Versus Polygamy.

Elina, the beautiful but poor peasant girl, is at the core of the plot. After her father’s death a hunter comes to claim her in marriage in return for a debt. Her uncle wants a rich politician to marry her instead. The case is brought to the village chief. The next morning the chief is troubled by the new legislation outlawing polygamy, and decides to fight it in court, knowing that his own trial would cause a sensation. But how does he get to the court?

After the two men have brought their claims on Elina, he decides to use Elina to get to the court, by saying he would marry her in addition to 31 other wives. Elina agrees to go along with his plan and when he is to give judgment on the men’s case, he puts it to Elina to say who she’d marry. Elina says she’d marry him. The two men threaten to report him to the police, which is what he wants. He gets arrested, gets a lot of publicity and gets the crucial trial, the outcome being that he is fined 500 pounds for “committing” the crime. The anti-polygamy legislation however gets to be suspended. As for Elina, she falls for the chief’s son and they plan to get married.

May 7, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1974. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Congo

This story that has been made a movie starts out a page turner, in the eastern jungles of what used to be known as the Belgian Congo, presently Zaire. When the locals are reluctant to accompany an American expedition towards a mountain area they regarded as possessing evil spirits, their fears are waved off as mere African superstition. But the same night they camp at their destination, everyone is killed and their camp destroyed.

Far away in Houston in the US, a video of the destruction is watched via satellite, up to the point of demolition of the transmission equipment. The firm responsible for the expedition, due to the priceless object of their quest—blue diamonds for use in super-fast weapons and computing electronics—raises another team to go right in secretly, by so doing covering up the loss of the first one.

Going along with the second team is Amy, a female mountain gorilla that has been raised by a scientist (Elliot) who has taught her hundreds of words in American sign language. She has just gone through a depressive period that could not be explained except for drawings of strange buildings with semicircular doors and windows. It turns out the drawings are from her childhood past, of the ruins of a famed lost city in the African jungles that Arabs referred to as Zinj. She had been rescued very young on being found crying next to her murdered parent and now she is about seven years old, the equivalent of a human teenager.

The second team is also aided by a famed white European-African (Munro) skilled in the wars and peoples of the continent from Kenya where he was born up to Algeria, selling his skills to the highest bidder. They risk warring or hostile locals and rough rivers to arrive the ruined lost city of Zinj to find the two camps of earlier expeditions destroyed by the same mysterious creatures. (The other camp was by a competing Euro-Japanese group also gunning for the diamonds.)

The creatures are gorilla-like and so the importance of “talking” Amy to the second expedition now comes to light. Their hair is silver rather than black, they have a whispering mode of talking to each other, their eyes are colored differently, and while ordinary gorillas sleep at night, these ones do not. (Scientist Elliot believes he has discovered a new species, and can’t wait to return to America to stake his claim.) The second team is better prepared so they are able to fend the silver gorillas off the first two nights. By exploring the ruins of the lost city during the day, the team—aided by computing power in Houston—discovers that the black inhabitants of the city about 500 years before had trained the silver gorillas to use stone paddles to attack enemies and thieves. They had been trained as guards for the mines that produced the diamonds the city appeared to thrive on. With the humans all gone for unknown reasons, the new gorillas still remained to continue playing their attack roles, teaching their offspring to use stone paddles to crush the skulls of any intruders to the area.

Amy is able to stop the new gorillas from killing Elliot at one point. As it was exactly in that locality that she was born, she could understand the whispering language of the new gorillas and so is able to translate some of their words for Elliot. (The silver gorillas it were that murdered her mother years ago.) From these translations, Elliot and Ross, the female representative of the expedition firm, are able to set up a taped broadcast telling the silver gorillas in their language to leave them alone, and this becomes their saving grace when the gorillas come for a final attack on their camp.

The precious blue diamonds are eventually found the next day. But due to the recklessness of lead scientist Ross, a massive volcano siding the valley of the ruins is hastened to eruption right away. Save for a few pieces Munro kept in his pocket, they have to abandon the diamonds and everything else in a race to escape the massive volcano as it spews forth lava and ash and dangerous gases.

May 7, 2015. Novel first published in 1980, this Ballantine Books edition being first published in 1993, ISBN 0-345-37849-0.

A Grain of Wheat

A few days to Uhuru (Independence) Day, key political players in the vicinity of the village of Thabai pause to take stock of the recent history of Kenya and the struggle between Black and White. During the struggle to overthrow white rule two men emerged as heroes in the village, but for different reasons—Mugo and Kihika.

Mugo became a hero for his defense of a pregnant woman being assaulted by agents of the white oppressor, and his refusal to confess the oath in detention, bearing all torture, which in itself inspired other detainees to riot. Kihika became a hero for leading a rebel force from the forest which attacked the white oppressors and collaborators. The unfortunate thing was that Mugo’s actions weren’t due to any conscious desire to fight for freedom for his people, but more a personal rebellion against society. So when Kihika wanted to bring him into the fold of the rebel forces, he recoiled in fear. His subsequent betrayal of Kihika led to Kihika’s capture and murder by hanging, and harsh punishment for all the villagers as a deterrent to others that might be harboring rebels.

So as the Uhuru Day finally approached, Mugo felt the pains of his betrayal, which he actually regretted from the instant he carried out the act. He wouldn’t accept the leadership status he was being offered by the village elders. Kihika’s comrades that survived were out to expose the person that betrayed him, without knowing that it was Mugo, whom everyone had taken for a hero comparable to Kihika himself. To overcome the turmoil in his head, Mugo made the confession during the Uhuru Day celebration, rather than give the political speech everyone had come to hear. This confounded everyone and people left in disappointment. Kihika’s comrades and the village elders could not forgive him. He was secretly tried and killed to avenge the murder of Kihika.

May 4, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel first published in 1967. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Hard Rain

During the Woodstock musical festival of 1969 in New England a secret deal was made between Pat Rodney (a high school dropout musician) and Hartley Frame (a rich senator’s kid with musical talent who dropped out of college): Pat would go to Vietnam as Hartley, in exchange for a new sports car. The car was bought, Pat went to Vietnam and Hartley went to LA as Pat. One of the guys who knew about the deal sold it to the Soviets who start running him as an agent first by sending him to Hartley’s father with the story about the switch and blackmailing him. Pat’s sister blackmails Hartley: The senator hires Keith and cooperates with him and the Soviets to avoid losing his career, and Hartley pays Pat’s sister $10,000 a year to keep her quiet.

Pat as Hartley is captured in Vietnam and given slave labor after being tortured. Hartley as Pat makes it big in LA, marries and has a daughter Kate. Several years later things begin to happen when Pat escapes from the slave camp in Vietnam, goes to Thailand, murders an American for his papers and clothing and through these lands in the States. He takes the real Hartley prisoner together with his daughter and has them drive back to New England. Their disappearance gets to Hartley’s ex-wife who goes after them. The active part of the story is about her search for her daughter and ex-husband; the background plot comes out in the course of things.

Pat’s sister gets murdered by Keith; Pat himself crucifies Hartley on a guitar in the grounds of the Woodstock festival; he together with Hartley’s parents are shot by a Soviet agent, who is shot by Keith as a cover-up. Very exciting indeed.

April 28, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1988. Picture source: goodreads.com.

Flowers and Shadows

This is about the ruin of one tough rags-to-riches businessman of brutal and secret methods and how this affected his son and wife. In particular it’s about how the son Jeffia came out of the experience a more matured young adult. Jonan is the business man who started from nothing setting up a paint business with Sowho his half-brother. In other to get to the top he eliminated Sowho by having him jailed. When Sowho got out of jail he secretly began planning his revenge. Now the time has come for his revenge.

Jonan is worried that Sowho should telegram him about his planned visit. His business wasn’t going well and Sowho made secret deals with his co-directors in order to undermine him. When Gbenga resigned Jonan wanted to teach him a lesson so he sent thugs to beat him up and this led to his death. Jeffia got involved with Cynthia, the daughter of one of his father’s former staff whom his father framed and jailed when he posed a threat. When Jonan and Sowho finally met, a fight resulted, later to turn into a car chase, during which Jonan had a heart attack, rammed into Sowho’s car, and they were both killed. Jeffia and his mother were left to pick up the broken pieces, with Cynthia leading Jeffia on.

The book is full of teenage thoughts about life and corrupt society, and the style is rather long-winded. Sometimes the voice sounds unrealistic, for example in describing a black person as going “pale,” in that many of the women had “distinct” or “pointed” noses, in saying that an Igbo character ”prostrated” for his boss. Igbo people don’t prostrate like Yorubas do.

April 28, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1989. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).