The Rape of Lysistrata

This tragedy revolves around the love between a black Brazilian writer (Camilo) and a white American student (Mimi). Somewhere in between is Beth, Mimi’s friend, who apparently does not like the relationship and in a bid to influence Mimi plants an angry article very hostile to whites and contemptuous of black/white sexual relationships, for Mimi to read. The article was actually written by Obi, Camilo’s closest friend and the narrator, but Beth apparently hoped Mimi would assume it had been written by Camilo and take offense, as she had been doing some typing work for Camilo. This of course happens and the article nearly drives Mimi mad after she reads it.

She and Camilo were to be married in about nine days, but reading the article made her think that Camilo didn’t really love her, that deep down he was angry at her whiteness as manifested in the article. She decides to test him and asks him for sex the first time ever, endures the ordeal in revulsion, then goes straight to the police to report a rape. Camilo is arrested and due to a guilty conscience for his wife that died in prison from having stolen to keep them from starving to death in London years before, he pleads guilty, is jailed for life, and apparently commits suicide in jail. The story didn’t actually unfold openly like this. The arrest of Camilo was a great mystery to Obi and it took him to the end of the book to find out what actually happened.

June 7, 2015. Review initially written in 1992. Novel first published in 1980. Picture source: goodreads.com.

Dance Hall of the Dead

The title and the thrilling plot revolves around the traditional beliefs of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico on one hand, and the pursuit of fame at all costs by an archaeologist. The archaeologist Reynolds wanted to disprove an accepted theory about Folsom Man. To ensure this he was systematically planting artifacts in the ground at a research site, to be dug up by an undergraduate assistant for real. Unluckily for him Cata, one of the local kids, found the artifacts he’d hidden and took some away. Reynolds then set out to get the artifacts from the boy to prevent his returning them to his assistant (which would break his cover). He couldn’t go openly so he went under the mask of a Salamobia, a spirit that was supposed to cut off the head of anybody that had broken a taboo. In their encounter he murdered the boy (by nearly chopping off the head) and this became the genesis of the story. Who killed Cata and why?

Cata was a Zuni and had George, a Navajo, for a friend. Not finding all the missing artifacts with Cata and having killed him, Reynolds set out to get George, probably because Cata admitted giving George some of the artifacts. George on the other hand believed that a kachina or spirit had killed Cata for breaking a taboo (by telling him too much about their religion). He set out to visit the place where the Zuni spirits were supposed to go after death, to appease the spirits. This place was Kothluwalawa, or the Dance Hall of the Dead.

Leaphorn is the Navajo policeman on the case who tries to find the fleeing George. It is he who pieces the bits together and informs the Zuni about who had killed their son. Leaphorn sees George in the end but could not save him from Reynold’s bullet. Reynolds on the other hand had committed a grave offence against the Zunis, especially by wearing their sacred mask, and shortly after he shot George was himself killed conspicuously.

June 6, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1973.

Red Dust

Based on the work of the Truth & Reconciliation Committee in South Africa—why it was set up and what it could achieve and actually achieved. The evils of apartheid South Africa (separate housing and facilities, maltreatment of blacks by white masters, etc) and how things have changed with the arrival of black majority rule.

The story is told around the fictional town of Smitrivier, of how Sarah Bacant, an intelligent lawyer who’d been living in the US for the past fourteen years, is called back by her mentor Ben Hoffman to assist him help a black couple Mr/Mrs James Sizela to force an ex-police leader Pieter Muller to reveal the location of the body of their only son Steve whom they believed was murdered under his custody. Steve’s friend and mate during the freedom struggle Alex Mpondo who survived the detention to become an MP is also called to assist in this. In the course of a T & R hearing, we are told about the tortures and eventual death of Steve, and how another policeman Dirk Hendricks buried him at night behind a farm.

June 6, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 2000. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

The Black Album

This edition was published in 2000 with the action taking place in 1989. The story is set around a poor London college and its poor Pakistani or Muslim students and their neighborhood. The hero is Sharif, a young man of Pakistani parents, the son of an immigrant, caught in a conflict of identity.

On one side he is in love with Deedee, his white lecturer, an independent-minded woman who takes delight in enjoying herself with drugs and sex. On the other are some Pakistani Muslims led by a religious fanatic whom he gets involved with. Then there is his older brother, a drug pusher who has fallen victim to his own goods and is on the run from the police. Sharif has to decide between religious fanaticism of his colleagues and associating with Deedee, because she gives him an ultimatum. He finally decides to dump fanaticism after his friends rejoiced at the fatwah imposed on Salman Rushdie and began burning his book.

June 6, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 1965. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Some Kind of Black

Probably the first book by a black British author of Yoruba descent, about contemporary black life in London, that I’d read.

It’s the story of Dele and his sickler sister Dapo, and their Nigerian immigrant parents. It is the story of Dele’s last days at college, his involvement with three girls, night life in London, cultural awareness, his involvement with a political organizer of bent ways, his reconciliation with his disciplinarian of a father, and his search for some meaning and direction in his life. It is a story that shows the discrimination against blacks in London as much as the possibility of true love between whites and blacks.

June 6, 2015. Review initially written in 1998. Novel first published in 1996. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Airframe

An eye opener into issues of safety and commercial aircraft manufacturing and competition mingled with boardroom in-fighting on the one hand, and the impact and modus operandi of (cable TV) journalism on the other. Norton is the manufacturer of aircrafts, and the chief operating officer (Marder) does not like the way he was passed over when the new president was picked, despite being married to the family of the founder. So he is secretly plotting to overthrow the president, using an accident involving one of their aircrafts as a ploy. While investigation is on to determine what caused the accident, the producer of Newsline, a weekly TV show, sees something worth selling to the public—the scary tale of a defective aircraft. Marder is very pleased with Newsline’s interest and does his best to both undermine discovery of the root cause of the accident and also leak confidential information to them.

But then Marder didn’t reckon with the dogged determination of our heroine, Casey Singleton, whose job put her in charge of QA/IRT (quality assurance and incidence review team) at the company. She succeeds in getting to the root causes of the accident after a tense fast-paced investigation: The captain of the aircraft had allowed his son to take his seat while he went for a coffee. And a bad part had given a wrong warning which the inexperienced son was unable to correctly handle, leading to the accident.

When Newsline could no longer air the story they had in mind, seeing Norton’s wasn’t actually an unsafe plane after all, the COO’s attempted coup had to flop in the end.

June 1, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel first published in 1996 by Century Books, this Arrow Books edition being first published in 1997, ISBN 0-09-955631-6.

Burger's Daughter

This is a story of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s told from the perspective of the Burgers, a revolutionary white family fighting for black rights as communists.

It centers around the experiences of their only surviving child and graduate daughter, Rosa Burger, after the father died in prison: Her growing up used to being followed by cops, her loves, jobs, relations with friends of the parents, her visit to Europe to her dad’s first wife in France and then to London where an encounter with the black boy that had grown up in her house forced her to return and face life in South Africa.

June 1, 2015. Review initially written in 2007. Novel first published in 1979 by The Viking Press; this Bloomsbury edition being published in 2000, ISBN 0-7475-4979-6. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).