South Africa Books

An air of the surreal weaves through some of the stories in this intriguing collection of short fiction. As an astute and engaged observer of social realities at home and globally, South African Nadine Gordimer brilliantly captures ordinary people's lives as they attempt to make sense of it, more or less successfully. And then, there is usually an unexpected twist towards the end of each story - some giving a future perspective in a different voice, inviting the reader to ponder varied possibilities.

Nadine Gordimer, multiple award winner, including of the Nobel Prize in 1991, is well known and admired for her short fiction. Here, she brings together a novella, a number of portraits of normal people with very brief fragments or musings based around a specific news event, such as a tsunami in the title story, "Loot". "The Generation Gap" is a light hearted, ironic look at the squabbles of grown-up children about their widowed father who falls in love with a violinist of their own age. Something surreal happens with a group of professors in "Look Alike", another tongue in cheek story, yet with an allegoric message. The novella "The Mission Statement" is the most traditional of the stories in the collection. The central figure is a middle-aged English foreign aid worker experiencing her first African assignment. Her story is a surprising departure from the rest of the collection, both in tone and substance: very down to earth and, despite the intended surprise ending, completely realistic.

"Karma", the final segment is in itself a collection of vignettes, held together by a linking voice - that of a forever returning spirit-child. Anybody who has read the hauntingly beautiful The Famished Road by Booker Prize winner, Ben Okri, will remember the importance of the spirit-child in African cultures. Gordimer introduces such a spirit, develops it into one that is capable of memory and learning, who returns again and again, initially as an afterthought sprinkled into some of the short pieces. Yet in "Karma", it takes an important reflective role, linking the individual vignettes together. She expands the concept of "karma", building around it some of the most evocative pieces in the whole collection: love, race, relationships, society's explicit or implicit restrictions. As the title suggests, Hindu beliefs are also reflected upon by the returning spirit. The question remains at the end whether the need to return to the world to overcome the faults or weaknesses of the previous life does not in itself lead to "an unfinished business".

Gordimer's language is spare and efficient, her people descriptions vivid and precise. The detached tone and approach she demonstrates to her subjects does, however, not deny them emotional depth. Oblique references to brutality and conflict during the Apartheid period in South Africa are interwoven with the lives of her characters, in some cases contrasted with the post-Apartheid potential for a new beginning or ending. Nevertheless the stories reach beyond their locale in addressing common human aspirations and preoccupations. All of them leave room for the reader to ponder and expand on ideas and questions raised. [Friederike Knabe]

Gordimer's use of language is beyond what the ordinary story teller employs. Her words are nuanced, metaphorical, and indirect in ways that let you mentally fill in the gaps and is very satisfying to one as the reader. I don't know of anyone who writes quite like her. Her stories are not plot driven and seem to evoke something profound about the characters' humanity that is difficult to describe. There are ordinary situations in some of her stories that are so vividly expressed, that they never leave your mind. Her writing is in a class of its own.

The characters of the short stories in Loot seem to be held an arm's length from their readers; even in the lofty "Karma", a story told from the viewpoint of a soul, the meat of life is there but the juice is missing. I didn't feel any moments of clarity or great inspiration, no need to copy down any passages for future reference. Luckily, this book is a quick read, so not much investment needed time-wise.
If you enjoy politics and are an unsentimental, analytical thinker, you'll like this. If you're an artist, emotional, or creative in any way, I'd move on.

The Panama Canal (49 pages) by Elizabeth Mann is a well written book containing the very basic information about the canal. My disappointment is that the book was set in oversized type and every other page was an illustration. It was interesting and very easy reading. The book would be best suited for a pre-high school student.

The Panama Canal was an incredible triumph of engineering and the final move towards completion was a patently illegal action by U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French engineer who had built the Suez Canal was attempting to build the canal across Panama, but the company that he headed eventually abandoned the project in disgrace. At that time, Panama was a state in Columbia and President Roosevelt tried to get the Columbians to sign a treaty ceding the rights to a canal to the United States. When he considered the conditions demanded by the Columbians to be too onerous, he supported a "rebellion" in Panama that led to independence from Columbia. A treaty was then signed and the Americans started work on the canal.
The problems that had to be overcome were substantial, and they are very well detailed in this book. The damming of the Chagres River to make the 164 square mile reservoir Gatun Lake was a stroke of genius as it created a large waterway and provided a source of water to run the locks. I was surprised to learn that there are only 12 locks in the canal. A lot of this is due to the enormous amount of earth that was moved to create the Culebra cut, a ditch 272 feet deep and wide enough for ocean-going ships to pass through. It also requires 52 million gallons of water for a ship to go through the canal.
However, the greatest single problem to be solved had nothing to do with moving earth. It was the battle against the jungle and the associated tropical diseases. All of this is explained in great detail, including the solutions to these problems. This is an excellent way for children to learn how the Panama Canal was created and I recommend it to everyone who teaches history to children.

The illustrations in this book are so good that I have offered it to my husband as a "ready made diary" of our trip to the Panama canal. The pictures capture all the beauty and the technological marvel of the canal. The book is an excellent visit in an armchair.

I enjoyed this book very much, but I'm finding myself viewing it as a guilty pleasure, in the same way I enjoy "Raiders of the Lost Ark," Tex Ritter's "Blood on the Saddle," and PDQ Bach--not great art, but a lot of fun. Courtenay is fluid, unsubtle writer, quite easy to follow, but he exploits his ability with a sentence to create almost non-stop action, much larger-than-life characterizations, and blatant moralizations. Such writing can be, of course, genuinely entertaining and can serve the purpose of bringing home lessons to a popular readng audience that they might otherwise ignore, but at the cost of avoiding the complexity of the social issues and the deeper horrors of policies like Apartheid. The ending, in particular, was a junior high school boy's fantasy and not the behavior of a bright, sophisticated, now mature young man who had been mentored by series of compassionate, thoughtful adults, and who had the presence of mind to remain in control of his emotions when he was attacked. Peekay, by that point in the book, should have been better than to end the fight as he did, or, at the very least, to admit his loss of control and some regret over the final act. The Peekay we had come to know in the book would have seen the Judge as the drunken loser he was, defeated him as efficiently as possible, and thereafter dismissed him.

The Power of One was a fantastic book. It held a lot of compelling moments while teaching us to never give up on our goals and dreams. It was exiting and I could not put the book down because it was to good. I can't wait to read Tandia as I want to know if Peekay can reach his dream. For Bryce Courtenay's first book it was better than I expected and I can't wait to read more of his books. I would reccomend this book to anybody who wants to achieve their dreams.

The Power of One by Bryce Courtney is a novel about a young white boy growing up in aparthied South Africa. At 500 slow but captivating pages, it took almost 5 hours to read. Like all books that I read, someone suggested it was a good read. It was well written. Pure recreation. Highly recommended for fun but the business lessons are few and you need to stretch a bit to get them.

One quote from the book (used in a boxing context) was "Lead first with your head then with your heart". Does that apply to business? Without the logic and head, there can be no heart.

Another good quote was "I was cultivating a habit of winning. Winning is a state of mind that embraces everything you do, so I found I won in other things as well.". This quote definitely applies to my life philosophy.

The African continent of course is huge, and therefore it is not surprising that the number of ideas, works of art, and customs is overwhelming and would take any one person many decades to sort through. This book gives a brief sampling of these, with particular attention paid to the lands south of the Sahara desert. The author concentrates his attention on this part of Africa, for he reasons that it is this part that was shielded from European and Middle Eastern influence, due to the difficulty of crossing the Sahara. The reader learns of the Bushman, who were at the Cape of Good Hope when the first Europeans arrived, the Pygmies, and the Hamites, the latter being the group most strongly influenced by Islamic and Arabic traditions. It is primarily the Negro population of this geographical region though that the author concentrates on in the book.

As the author points out, one troubling feature of African mythology is that they did not usually write anything down, but instead passed on their stories orally. The author blames this lack of written word on the geographical isolation that discouraged its spread. But he also points out that the absence of writing was also a characteristic of ancient American civilizations and the ancient Britons and Teutons. The author therefore relies on the research and recordings of modern African scholars who painstakingly wrote down the stories told them by the various peoples.

A culture of course needs more than just verbalization to express its ideas and moods. To capture and sustain an idea in time without writing, one can use art, particularly in paintings and sculpture. The author argues that African art is deliberately expressive and was employed to symbolize the life in every aspect. Interestingly, the author holds that African proverbs and myths expressed joy in life and human activity. Calling it a 'world-affirming' philosophy, in which life on earth is thought of as good, despite human suffering. The Africans were surely correct about this. Absolutely for sure.

The reader will also learn that nearly all African peoples believe in a supreme being, who created all things. Some of the names of this being include Mulungu in East Africa, Leza in central Africa, and Nyambe in the west. And the author points out, interestingly, that very few temples were built to the "supreme" god, while places of worship were built for the lesser deities and ancestors. "God is too great to be contained in a house" say the Africans. Also interesting is that the Africans did not have a god of Sun, for such a god was not needed: there is plenty of sun in Africa. In some African myths, god created the earth in four days, a fifth day being reserved for worship. God also created a mountain with the power of speech, so as to allow the people to hear the divine voice and laws. Dreaming was considered a gift from God, and it functioned as a sequence of messages from God. But witchcraft was believed in also, with women again being the chief practioners.

Man was not the first to create fire, say some Pygmy legends. Rather, it was chimpanzees who first possessed it, and a Pygmy stumbled across their fire accidently and wearing a long bark-cloth, caught it on fire and ran for home. Thus the origin of fire for man.

The god of some African myths used to live on Earth, but left due to some human fault. Others speak of a Golden Age, in which god left willingly. God leaves paradise, and not the humans, for some of the African legends. Also, death was not considered natural in some African myths. It got its start from a dog or a chameleon. The author gives several other fascinating accounts of the African conception of death, including a story very similar to Pandora's Box. Curiosity in many cultures is considered the origin of all evil and suffering, unfortunately.

Part of the "Library of the World's Myths and Legends" series, this book was done by an author familar with both African culture and world mythology so it does a wonderful job exposing the oft-overlooked myths and legends of sub-Saharan Africa. I make a point of saying that because everything north of the Sahara (including Egypt) is excluded from this book. Instead, the focus is on the related themes running through indigenous traditions. Lavishly illustrated with masks, ceremonial objects, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, wooden figures, amulets, Bushmen rock paintings and so forth, this is a wonderful little book to look at. The introduction does a good job of showing how diverse Africa is, both in terms of geography and in terms of ethnicity.

The first couple chapters are devoted to the Supreme Being (as indigenous African culture was monotheistic), including a widespread belief that some action of man caused this Supreme Being to withdraw from the world. The myths and legends of different groups are given, revealing both similarities and differences. From there it goes to examine myths of the creative ancestor figures and beliefs on the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Both are central to African beliefs, and are somewhat connected as people are believed to continue their involvement with the community after death as ancestor figures eventually to be reborn. These are very sophisticated ideas common throughout the coninent and again, numerous myths and legends are given. One particular myth that shows up here are the various myths about the origin of death.

The next couple chapters examine more social aspects of mythology in African life, taking a look at oracles, divinations, magic, witchcraft, monsters and secret societies. These are things which take an active role in community life (whether it was to help the community as oracles and secret societies did or to harm it as witches and other monsters did), and the book is full of depictions of ceremonial objects such as masks, divination tablets, diving rods, vessels for making offerings, bullroarers and so forth. Both magical practices and specific myths related to them are observed, giving the reader a clear idea of how the practices related to a mythical past and connected the practicioners to the creative ancestors. This is followed up by legends involving historical events including Osei Tutu and the golden stool, tales of old Ifé and Benin, Kikuyu myths of Mt. Kenya, the~ mystery of Great Zimbabwe and even stories about the first ecounters with Europeans, amongst other things.

The book closes out with numerous well known African animal tales, including numerous tales of Anansi the spider trickster of the Ashanti. He then mentions how aside from African influences travelling to the Americas and even Europe, other mythologies have influenced Africa; Islamic tales such as the 1,001 Nights in Muslim communities (especially in the north and the east), Indian tales like the Pancha-tantra and Jataka along the coast, Portuguese stories in Angola and Mozambique and even Grimm's Fairy Tales in some schools. He finishes by stating the importance of recording African myths to provide insight into the indigenous religious views of the African people, and ultimately I think that this book is a decent introduction to just that. Its certainly worth picking up, if only for a general review of African mythology and it's major themes. The nice thing about this is that it doesn't focus too much on one particular group or another. You can find tales from the Pygmies, Mbundu, Hausa, Swazi, Zulu, Chaga, Malagasy, Venda, Dogon, Songhai, Shona, Dahomey, Igbo and many others besides in this book. Sierra Leone is given as much attention as, say, the Congo or Kenya. So ultimately this is a wonderful little book if all you want are comparative myths and legends of sub-Saharan Africa.

Ian Knight has taken up the mantel left by Donald Morris, the author of a (previously "the") seminal history of the cultural conflict between two ways of life on the South African high veldt. In this book, as well as in his previous works, Ian Knight restores dignity, complexity and sophistication to the losers, not just the winners, in another chapter in the ongoing story of the "advance of civilization". A "must read" for those who have read "The Washing of the Spears at least once (and thought about what they had read). A "must read" for those who haven't. Well done, Sir Knight. When can we expect more?

This edition is a fundamental ingredient to a piece of historical fiction I'm stewing. It is entitled "The Ecstasy of Wrath", and its moments of historical rigour are thanks to this book. One page 108 of "The Ecstasy of Wrath", I write "Shaka Zulu's obsidian thighs quivered as they flanked the cinnamon brown sprig of prostrated womanhood, Ozekwan. Shaka Zulu turned around to make sure his door, or rather the hanging flap of tawny cattle hide, gave him privacy. Ozekwan could now see Shaka Zulu from behind. He felt her eyes on his back and his onyx buttocks clenched and became spasmed, like the shimmering flank of a sleek stallion. He laid his Pulsar Quadrant-Ray aside, relaxing in the security of erotic congress." I based this account on several passages in Ian Knight's zealously researched book, as well as my own imagination as I'm introducing a science fiction element. Ian Knight's is a book I recommend, somewhat, if only to understand the difference between the Zulu asagai and the tentatively named 'Zephyr-class Ionoblaster.'

Not long ago, it was common belief that rice was domesticated in Asia and brought to other parts of the world either by Muslims or European traders. Thus, if rice were cultivated in the Carolinas from the late 17th century on, the presence of that crop was due to some European intervention. Carney explodes this myth. Showing the existence of rice cultivation in West Africa for at least two thousand years and proving that a) the variety of rice plant is not the same as the one in Asia and b) that a vast body of knowledge about rice growing existed in West Africa when the Portuguese first arrived there, she lays firm groundwork on which to build her idea that it was African slaves who taught the English planters in the Carolinas how to grow rice, built all the waterworks and field irrigation systems, passed on knowledge about milling the crop, and cooking the rice as well. She concludes that a whole system of knowledge was transferred from West Africa to North America's southeast coastal swamps (and to Brazil and Suriname too). This knowledge belonged especially to women of certain peoples who lived in the coastal rice growing zones of the area between Senegal and the Ivory Coast (and also in the interior [...] delta area of Mali). It was appropriated, just like the bodies of the slaves, and falsely said to originate with the white planters. How a bunch of ship captains and slave traders would have time to master the art of rice cultivation and bring it to the Americas was never explained by traditional historians. And the rice paddies of England somehow do not loom large in British legend. Africans---again---were erased from history. Carney has re-written them into the record in a very interesting book. The transfer of rice from Africa resulted in South Carolina being the richest of the colonies; it resulted in a black majority population for some time with the concommitant fear of rebellion among the white slave owners; and just for a short time, it allowed slaves to bargain with their owners to get some free time to attend small gardens of their own. Husking the rice by pounding it, a daily task for West African women, became a day-long, exhausting job for slaves in the Carolinas, part of the reason for the high death rate. In terms of breadth of research and the very topic of research, this is a five star book.

There is one fly in the ointment. I think this book could have been cut, or at least, more carefully edited. There is a very large amount of repetition. The same ideas, even the same phrases, appear many times and it becomes tiresome to be told the same thing yet again. Many times I felt like exclaiming, "OK, OK ! I get it." This aside, BLACK RICE is a fine book. If you are interested in American history or African/American connections, if the tranfer of agricultural knowledge systems intrigue you, you can't afford to miss it.

Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. Judith A. Carney. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. xiv and 240 pp. Notes, references, and index. (ISBN 0-674-00452-3)

Reviewed by David Barber, Graduate Student, The University of Southern Mississippi; Hattiesburg, MS.

Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, By Judith A. Carney, investigates the historical origins of South Carolina's rice industry and the role African slaves played by providing the knowledge and technology of rice cultivation in the Americas. From a personal background, Judith A. Carney is a professor of geography at UCLA. Carney's main argument focuses on the African slaves' contributions to the rice industry, their introduction of rice to the Americas, and their cultivation technology that provided the driving force behind one of the most profitable cash crop commodities in the South. Carney's book dispels the false, popular belief that rice was introduced to the Western Hemisphere by European traders. However, the book is limited, somewhat, as a source for studying the history of American cooking. Although Carney's book provides a valuable insight into the history of rice cultivation in America, it provides very little information regarding the usage or consumption of cultivated rice by the American society.
Judith A. Carney is a professor of geography at UCLA. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkley. In Black Rice, Carney utilizes a variety of primary sources, as well as secondary sources to support her findings. The book contains an introduction, six chapters, notes, references, and an index.
In the first two chapters of Black Rice, Carney describes rice cultivation in Africa, mainly on the African west coast. In Africa, rice was cultivated mainly on rain-fed uplands, tidal floodplains, and inland swamps. The cultural/gender roles in western Africa positioned women as the dominant labors of rice cultivation. In addition to describing the diffusion of rice cultivation throughout Africa's many ecosystems, a large focus is placed on the mangrove ecosystems of West Africa, due to their similarities to tidal swamps in South Carolina.
Chapters three and four examine the skilled labor of African slaves producing rice in South Carolina and the organized gender division of labor that remained intact within rice cultivation in America. By seeking African slaves taken from the rice producing regions of Africa, primarily females, plantation owners sought specific slaves knowledgeable of cultivation and technologies necessary for rice production. In comparison to cotton plantations, the labor practices on rice plantations allowed the slaves to concentrate on his or her personal needs once daily task were completed. The slaves on cotton plantations labored from dawn to dusk. This element helped African slaves to maintain a certain level of cultural identity, an uncommon freedom granted to few slaves during the era.
The final two chapters of the book focus on the introduction of rice seeds to the Americas and the return of African slaves to the rice cultivation regions of Africa by abolitionist societies. Carney argues that rice cultivated in South Carolina was introduced by slaves entering the New World via slave ships. The origins of rice cultivation in South Carolina did, in fact, stems from slaves cultivating rice for personal use in the small garden plots allowed by plantation owners. To the African slave, rice symbolized freedom; in particular, the Carolina Gold variety introduced in Africa by returned slaves.
The value of Black Rice can be found in the knowledge and understanding it provides of rice's introduction, cultivation, and technology supplied by African slaves in the Americas. From its introduction by African slaves, initially in personal garden plots, rice has become one of America's main staple crops. However, once noticed for its potential, rice cultivation on Atlantic plantations became the primary focus for many plantation owners. Although the initial labor practices benefited slaves, economic demand for rice ushered in an increase measure of labor and output that resulted in many slaves dying in the disease infested conditions. Nevertheless, these conditions isolated some slaves and provided opportunities for them to maintain some of their African, cultural traits.
As a historical source for the study of American food history, Black Rice possesses many limitations. The book does not provide the reader with many examples of how cultivated rice was utilized by the consumer society, once it was produced. Aside from cereal, the book does not mention any meals that include rice as an ingredient. Although the author mentions many regions in the Western Hemisphere, the book's focus is limited to rice cultivation in North America and Africa, mainly rice cultivation in South Carolina.
Sense its introduction in the Americas by African slaves; rice has become one of the main staple crops utilized in American culinary practices. From this book, the reader gains a better understand of rice's origins, cultivation, and the technologies introduced by African slaves that made it possible prior to industrialized, mechanized methods of harvesting and production. However, the book pays little attention to the crop as an ingredient in American culinary. Carney does not provide the reader with any information regarding different classes of society utilizing rice differently or how it was incorporated into their diet. Rather, she focuses on rice as a symbol of freedom, allowing some Africans to maintain certain elements of their cultural identity. Throughout the book, the author's consistently argues the importance of female slaves and gender roles that were maintained in rice cultivation, until an increased demand required the incorporation of male labor into the system. Nevertheless, the material covered in the book is informative and interesting, providing the reader with a greater understanding of how one of our most popular staple crops originated in America.

This book is a fast and easy read but I think it gives a nice perspective into how the KhoiKhoi people reacted when they first saw the white Europeans on their beaches, coming out of eggs.

In this novella a white woman is captured but ends up with a KhoiKhoi leader while they are on a trek through the country.

It is a nice story about the two different cultures. Sometimes sad, sometimes funny but a nice read.

The first life of Adamastor is a fable mostly set in the late 15th century about the first meeting between the native people of Southern Africa and the explorers from Europe. It is a tale clothed in the myth of Adamastor, which first appeared in European literature in the 16th century. It is a tale about the main character T'Kamais (bigbird "that never came to rest"), and his relationship with s lost Portuguese woman.

What makes this tale different from many other accounts is that the tale is told from the viewpoint of the African Khoikhoin, and not the Portuguese. This makes an interesting contrast to "Verkenning" of Karel Schoeman (see my review). Verkenning describes (in historical detail) the exploration of Southern Africa from a Dutch explorer's point of view (set a couple of centuries after Adamastor).

This book is written with Brink's subtle sense of humour never far from the surface. However, the story has a very sad undertone - the misunderstanding between different peoples with different cultures and their different belief systems and mythologies.

Easy to read and enjoyable, Adamastor is highly recommended.

When I first saw the cover of the book in my Literature class,I thought it would be some serious,weirdo novel....and I was right..it is serious but not weird!It was simply amazing.I don;t think I'ver read a book that touched me so much!It was something that provided me a lot of insight about the country of South Arica and it's problems.It made me fall in love with the country!

In my honors english class, I had to read this book and do a book talk on it. At first, I thought it would be very fun to read because it was easy for me to understand, but as I kept reading it, the book was boring. Now, I have to do an essay on the author's purpose and I've been going through some comments on what other people said about the book, and I saw something touching. Not knowingly, this book touched my heart all of a sudden...

This book was written with hopes that those who have yet to come might grasp all aspects of the conflict known as WWII beyond those we might have seen courtesy of Frank Capra and news reels. If anyone has ever assumed the allies were without internal strife, that I am sad to say is a great wrong, for in fact the allies were split, not just in country, but by color, and race. This book tells the tail of the men of the 442nd Go for Broke, as well as the OSS Pacific theater translators who risked their lives and shed their blood for a country who, at the time housed their families in interment camps and took away their civil liberties. We were fighting the good fight, this is true and please do not think I hate my country, I would still fight for her and all her residence, but in that era it was not always so and this is obvious here. The turmoil one faces from both fronts in a war is relevent here as well as the feeling that most veterans felt when they knew friends for so long who the next morning would be killed. This story is also one of redemption, of how the Nisei not only proved themselves, but became one of the greatest units in the ETO around Italy. They shared the grief of their comrads in arms, the lack of supplies which hit all units of the campaign against Mt. Cassino and the light hearted moments on the Champaign campaign, an assignment that was not as horrible as those days in the Italian winter. To anyone who thinks America was a dog nation then, that is false. We learned from our faults, and today we honor these brave men, and always should.

I found the book to be an excellent coverage of the Japanese American military effort during the Second World War. The book does more then relates the stories of the Japanese-American combat units but also go into other fields that these folks went into which proves to highly useful and valuable in the war effort. Serving as translators, working in military intelligence service and working on propagranda were all important duties served by the Japanese-American soldiers who often had to fight this war on two fronts....the enemies and their own side. I found the book to be well written, well researched and quite informative.

Mr. van Jaarsveld has done all succulent lovers a great service by doing the botanical study and work necessary to present this modern taxonomic understanding of Gasterias.

This is a beautiful book, almost a coffee table type, yet it is also a scholarly work which involved enormous amounts of botanical field work. It's one deficiency in my opinion is a lack of adequate illustrative photographs. The color plates are impressive and of art quality but do not show the amount of variation within the genus nor what some species really look like. Otherwise a commendable effort.