BOTM: M.Conde, Segu (1984)
B. Duffy, The generation divide (2021)B. McClellan, Promise of Blood (2013)
H.P. Lovecraft, Selected stories (2018) [all stories pre-1935]
P. Oborne, Wounded tiger (2014)
R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987)
M. Wallis, Wines of the Rhone (2021)
M. Williams, The chalet girls grow up (1997)
I really liked Segu, though some reviewers have pointed out the problematic parts of it. It's particularly striking I think if you're used to an Anglophone sense of African literature, where Islam features so much less heavily than French Africa. Anyway, it's big, and bold, and well done. The narrative is very good at imagining the world that the characters inhabit, and it's chosen very well to show the gradations within that West African society as well as a specific slice of European encounters. And it was good to see the European narrative carry weight without taking centre stage.
A placeholder note for a provocative imagining of the future for the Chalet School triplets. I have lots of thoughts on this, which I don't have time to write down, but I am also glad I read that. Almost everyone else, good and bad, would have benefitted from making their books shorter.
I really liked Segu, though some reviewers have pointed out the problematic parts of it. It's particularly striking I think if you're used to an Anglophone sense of African literature, where Islam features so much less heavily than French Africa. Anyway, it's big, and bold, and well done. The narrative is very good at imagining the world that the characters inhabit, and it's chosen very well to show the gradations within that West African society as well as a specific slice of European encounters. And it was good to see the European narrative carry weight without taking centre stage.
A placeholder note for a provocative imagining of the future for the Chalet School triplets. I have lots of thoughts on this, which I don't have time to write down, but I am also glad I read that. Almost everyone else, good and bad, would have benefitted from making their books shorter.
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