South Africa Books

Growing up in 1960s Rhodesia, Lauren St. John thought she was in paradise. Despite the ever-looming threat of terrorist attacks, Lauren lived immersed in breathtaking African beauty. She and her younger sister Lisa had dozens of exotic pets and ran freely across the land, while native Africans ran their farm and household. The world was Lauren's for the taking.

Then the war ended, turning Rhodesia into Zimbabwe - and a completely foreign place. Suddenly the country's black citizens were in full force, demanding equality with their white neighbors. For people like Lauren, who had grown up believing whites were inherently in charge, it was an abrupt and bitter eye-opening. Was nothing the way she'd thought it was?

Slowly but sincerely, teenage Lauren struggles to gain a grasp on her new universe - making friends with the black girls now integrated into her school, getting to know the family employees as individuals rather than generic servants.

St. John's recollections are candid and well-written, capturing a memorable period in African history and offering valuable insight for readers all over the world.

I lived in Rhodesia in the time period this book was written. Although some minor facts are not quite correct, it gives an excellent feel for what it was like to live there and experience the multitude of changes.

I grew up in Rhodesia and can relate to all the animals and the terrorists and see the Rhodesia troops know someone who was in the army. Fortunately for those who grew up in the Rhodesia Era, have a better understanding of the meaning of life. No computer games, but real life. One thing that I hope to pass on to my kids is the love of animals, and how to survive without all the time spend in front of the TV and computers and be a real kid. Living in Bannockburn, traveling to Bulawayo, or Salisbury, stopping in Gweru, the Victoria Falls, Kariba, and buying mealies cooked on the side of the road, the braais, Renaults, the food, the wildlife, the smells of freshly rain on ground, elephants crossing the road on the way to Victoria Falls, and Matopus, all the baboons and monkeys running around, the rhino, giraffe, the lizards stealing food. The good life.

Growing up in Rhodesia makes me live life, like it were overflowing. The good times, the best of times, the real times.

This book is very good. I was a teenager in America when this was happening in Rhodesia. I remember it changing names and I remember there being some type of war, but I don't remember much else. I was shocked at some of the things that happened, but I really enjoyed the book. It should be required reading for anyone studying histories. I have passed this book on to some one who was born in that country and was just a few years older than the author and she has other memories, but she also said it was good. I definately recommend this book for anyone who likes books about history. It was very personable. The author made you really visualize the scenes as she described them.

This book is a beautifully written memoir of childhood that,importantly for me, does a fantastic job of evoking the time and place, scents and sounds of growing up on a farm in the bush. Perhaps more meaningful to me since I've traveled in southern Africa, but its a wonderful story for anyone not just those interested in that period and that place.

After completing 'Dusklands', Coetzee's first (and worst) novel, I stunbled upon this narrative. Considering that only few years has passed between these books, I expected nothing, only disappointment. Well, I must confess, I was utterly wrong.
Narrative is set 'in the heart of the country' - in the middle of the Africe, showing us a father and daughter on a small, outback farm... nothing special so far... One day, father gets himself a new lover and that causes breakdown in a daughter who yearned for his love and couldn't stand some other woman to take her place... Nothing special so far either.
What makes it so special. When one reads Magda's thoughts one can not but think of all the lonely people out there, madneses that roam the wilderness, hidden and forbidden, dangerous... Presenting the portrait of every madman out there, mixing the reality and imagination, bloody and violent worlds that intermix each other... Coetzee finds his words exactly as they should be, there is no overwrighting, there is no endless narrative, only concise thoughts of not so concise mind. Brilliant book...!!

I just finished the seventh book I've read by the Nobel-prize-winning J.M. Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, which was published in 1977 and is his second novel (Dusklands was the first).

The 138-page book is presented as numbered entries (in a journal?) written by the main character, whose name we learn only once more than half the book has gone by. It is Magda. She is the intelligent, bitter, unattractive, spinster daughter of a sheep farmer in an isolated, nearly barren region of South Africa. A lead man on the farm, a black man named Hendrik, has gone home and brought back a wife, Anna, whom Magda's father takes as his mistress. Magda seems to snap and fantasizes violent reprisals against one or both of them, until the reader begins to wonder if some or any of it is real.

We only have Magda's apparently corrupted point of view to go by. There is no other point of reference in the work. Coeztee, who was educated as a computer scientist and a linguist, presents and represents incidents in the journal in different ways, disorienting the reader, but perhaps orienting one more to the world of perception that Magda inhabits. Coetzee will take a common point in time, and have Magda represent it a couple of different ways, with different outcomes, one of which may become part of her mythology/reality. For example, she seems to say she's an only child, but she might have had a brother and other siblings. By the end of the book, the other siblings are reality for her.

And by the end of the book, Magda has completely cracked up, if you ask me. One line I read about this book is that it is a feminine narrative a la Beckett. Coetzee, who seems to be influenced by Kafka, does present an existential image of life as a colonial presence in South Africa. The perception of Magda is her reality (as it is for all of us), she exists in a constant state of suffering and seems to have very little power over her world. The world in which she lives is cold to her, and she seems to snap a little when she sees that she cannot make the South African landscape and its culture/people yield to her will. Her (apparent) act of killing her father, hiding his body, and then, ultimately, staying on at the farm alone seems to be her wild and desperate attempt to enforce her meager power on the world. At one point, living in the house with the black servants (who previously had lived in their own small house on the grounds), Magda writes, "I cannot say whether Hendrik and Anna are guests or invaders or prisoners" (p. 112). One could say the same for her and her existence in Africa at all.

The last section of the book is the most difficult to get through, as Magda imagines that the planes that fly overhead are dropping language down to her, words in Spanish, her interpretations of those words and her responses. She says that the "words are Spanish, but they are tied to universal meanings" (p. 126). Again, we only have her retellings of these incidents to go by, and it's difficult to decipher what "really happened."

And that takes us to the issue that the book seems to be working on, how much really happens, and how much does language play a part in shaping our perceptions of what happened, what we tell ourselves about the world around us, and our role in it. How does language shape our reality? She writes, "I have also tried to ignore the nightly messages. One cannot pursue a hopeless infatuation. ... It is a world of words that creates a world of things. Pah!" (p. 134). (The italicized phrase represents what Magda thinks the people on the planes are saying to her.)

One single entry from this part of the novel reads simply, "How can I be deluded when I think so clearly?" (p. 126). I imagine any of us could ask ourselves that. Coetzee's linkage of linguistics, colonialism, literary devices and representation is a powerful, sometimes overwhelming and frustrating reading experience, but I recommend it. I certainly would love to know what others think of this odd, somewhat unsatisfying, but deeply provocative book!

This book is dark, fierce, unpredictable, dream-like, and intelligent. Very symbolic and brings up many issues concerning whites in south africa. i like the format/structure very much. The main character, Magda, is a very captivating storyteller. Very intriguing psyche.

Magda is a lonely and embittered spinster who lives on a sheep farm in the heart of South Africa. Her mother died in childbirth, the cause of which Magda attributes to her father's "relentless sexual demands". Her bitterness comes from the fact that she feels that she has been an absence all her life to her father. They have always fronted each other in silence and so Magda became an unhappy peasant, "a miserable black virgin, "the mad hag" she is destined to be, having grown up with the servants' children.
Deprived of human intercourse, Magda realises that she overvalues the imagination. That is why when her father brings home a new bride, she fantacises of killing them both with an axe. The lonely farm is the place where she is "devoured by boredom", engulfed in the "monologue of the self" like a maze of words out of which she can't escape and she feels doomed to expire there "in the heart of the country", "in the middle of nowhere", a place she considers "was never intended that people should live here". Magda's father's sexual relationship with Hendrik's wife, the black servant, only adds to her dismay. It thus doesn't come as a surprise, given Magda's psychological disposition, that she often dreams of burning everything down and that she is actually about to murder the one person she considers responsible for her despair. After that, what is left for her but an inexorable descent into madness?
As André Brink stated about this novel: "It says something about loneliness, about craving for love, about the relation between master and slave and between white and black, and about a man's earthly anguish and longing for salvation - in a way you do not easily escape from once it has gripped you".

In the Heart of the Country tells the story of Magda, an old spinster who lives à huis clos with her father, her step-mother and the servants Henrik and Klein Anna, on a far-flung farm in the middle of the veld. The novel is set at an unspecified time, the present tense heightens this sense of timelessness. Madga's dis-aster starts at her birth since she is not the male heir that the baas has long wished for and who will keep the lineage alive. Therefore, Magda's only way of making a show of resistance to this despotic patriarch is to write her story and make her voice heard so as not to be "one of the forgotten ones of history" (3).
The novel is structured in fragments numbered from 1 to 266 to convey a seeming sense of linearity and thus give the reader a precarious fil conducteur to hold on to. But, by and by, the reading becomes somewhat disorienting and dis-astrous. Indeed, the boundary between reality and imagination is often blurred to our detriment since we vacillate endlessly between the two. Magda's narrative is riddled with adverbs of uncertainty, repetitions and at times contradictions. Yet, she has managed to accomplish an ingenious feat : captivate the reader's attention until the last page of the novel only to realize that s/he comes out of it none the wiser because all the contradictions that permeate the novel remain baffling.
Coetzee's novel achieves a double goal. First, to give voice to the voiceless Other, Magda, allowing her to dissolve the totalising linearity of the patriarchal discourse. Second, to condemn Apartheid as an authoritarian regime and portend its demise, and in both endeavours Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country has succeeded masterfully.

I bought this book after reading Mr. Boynton's obituary of Ian Smith. I thought this would be quite a controversial read, bringing to the table the intriguing issue of the trade off between majority rule and the total collapse of every African country that gained it. At the least I thought there would be more about the life of the last whites in Southern Africa. Instead the book's a collection of vignettes of various characters and seemed to be lacking any central theme.

Corruption, violence, and AIDS will throw most of Africa which is below the Sahara desert into chaos over the next 10-15 years, this book is an effective guide for it.

What a waste of valuable stoutheartedness the story of the Afrikaners is! These incredibly tough pioneers carved a stern Calvinist home for themselves out of native territories and raw bush, survived defeat at the hands of the British Empire at its peak, and hung on to their atavistic racial creed decades after it was abandoned elsewhere in the anglosphere.

In retrospect, the idea of a pluralistic democracy in Zimbabwe was foredoomed, given Africans' historic loyalty to their own tribes. The only example of democracy they saw firsthand was the Anglo-Afrikaner model, which had done them few favors in 350 years. And yet, majority rule swiftly became even worse. One watches current events in the new South Africa with apprehension, fearing a replay of Zimbabwe's slide into post-apartheid chaos.

Boynton honestly sets down his trepidation as lawlessness overtook former police state. He later details the corruption that the new government engaged in, and the reeling in of the press. Could things have possibly come out right?

South Africa and Rhodesia certainly had their chances. Boynton describes his love of his African home, his activist youth which ended with him being smuggled out of Rhodesia, evading arrest, and his homesickness during his exile. He also includes some vignettes about dissenters who were not so fortunate, low class Afrikaner desperadoes, and the fight against poachers on southern Africa's big game preserves. He closes with the quixotic incursion of some diehard Boer irregulars into a neighboring black homeland, in which three were killed. Thankfully, he doesn't try to sum up What It All Means, instead letting the spectacle speak for itself. Whether South Africa can truly become the multi-party democracy everyone hopes for, or if it will become a tribalism-driven dictatorship, is unknowable. But what a long strange trip it's been...

Graham Boynton is a white native of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and here he presents several stories of the end of white minority rule on the continent, as the leftover elite from the era of European colonialism gradually lost power to the black majority. Boynton imparts some interesting information about his native Rhodesia and its final white rulers – knowledge that doesn't appear in too many popular histories, plus some in-depth coverage of the drama of South Africa and the end of Apartheid. Unfortunately, this book just doesn't come together too well. Boynton's vignettes are scattered and detached, resulting in a collection of short reports that don't work as an informative history of the region or its leadership. Side coverage of the famous (in South Africa) story of two mass murderers, and a look at modern wildlife conservation efforts, go off on tangents of dubious usefulness, and Boynton's attempts to tie these topics in to his larger point are unsuccessful. Boynton's writing is also rather inconsistent in tone, and his attitude toward the black and white populations of his homeland (which is most likely common among his compatriots) will also seem very inconsistent to outside readers with an interest in the subject. There is some interesting historical and social knowledge here, though it is doubtful that Boynton has added much to the world's ongoing interpretation of white rule in Africa, along with its end and its long-term effects. [~doomsdayer520~]

I'm an avid reader of books on southern Africa, and this is one of my favorites -- I'm actually in the process of reading it for a second time. Boynton's stories about 'white Africans' of varying backgrounds come together to form a thorough picture of the decline of white minority rule in Africa from the 1960s to the present. The sections on Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the author's native country, are of particular interest and value. Boynton's conclusions are controversial, to be sure, but they are refreshingly so, adding a perspective to the debate on Africa's past, present and future that are rarely expressed. If you're interested in the subject, it's well-worth trying to find a copy of this great book.

Move over George Washington. You may be the father of the US, but the father of the New World Order developing before our eyes in the 21st century is Cecil Rhodes. Why? Because it was Rhodes who founded the secret society in 1891 and funded it with immense wealth from his South Africa gold and diamond mines. Rhodes stipulated that this secret society has but one object: "...the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire"! Additionally, Rhodes stated, "The society should inspire and even own portions of the press for the press rules the minds of men". And this, ladies and gentlemen is why we find us in the mess we are in today. Rhodes was so wealthy, he bought governments, bankers, media and universities. He made it happen as fully explained in the book, Don't Weep for Me, America: How Democracy in America Became the Prince (While We Slept). "Rhodes: The Race for Africa" is a good read on the mind of Cecil Rhodes. Additionally, it collaborates the secret society language most scholars pick up on when reading about Rhodes. Now you all know what forces are in motion and what the results will be: North American Union, remapping the Middle East, the building of a massive millitary to fight both Russia and China...

Mr. Rhodes knew a thing or two about a thing or two...

Cecil Rhodes, claims Antony Thomas, in a torturous attempt at historical comparison, shares the same qualities as Heinrich Himmler because both were taught by Jesuit priests. Really, now. While few people would ascribe any saintly qualities to Rhodes, statements like this do a disservice to serious students of history. As a result, Thomas' book is a mundane recitation of facts punctuated with generalized observations that come from nowhere and seem designed only to astonish.

The drama of Rhodes' life figured prominently in the story of the British Empire. Antony Thomas fails to capture this essence. The outsized historical character Cecil Rhodes deserves a less timid biographer (Robert Massie comes to mind) who understands the man and the majesty of times in which he lived.

Antony Thomas states up front that he is certainly no fan of Cecil Rhodes, and from that statement, the reader might expect to be treated to a real chop job. Instead, one gets a remarkably even-handed treatment of Rhodes. It would be easy simply to characterize Rhodes as evil, but to Thomas' credit, he does not take the easy way out. He is more than prepared to exam what can be best described as Rhodes' moral ambiguity.

I would not call Rhodes amoral in the strictist sense. He knew well enough when he was doing wrong to want to conceal his activities. Nor would I call him a ruthless pragmatist. His devotion to his friends was quite real, and in the case of Neville Pickering's death, Rhodes' all-consuming grief ultimately kept him from purchasing land that he knew was rich in gold. His personal feelings kept him from making a second, utterly massive, fortune in gold. That is hardly the action of pragmatist.

Trying to figure out what made Rhodes tick becomes trickier the more one examines his deeds. Even Thomas is vexed at times at how easily Rhodes moves from one alliance to another, and completely reverses his stands on issues such as native rights. By the time of his death, Rhodes was lionized throughout the British Empire as being in the vanguard of imperialists, but Thomas shows that for most of his career, he was strictly pursuing his own economic and political interests, and did not cloak himself in the gard of British Imperialism until it was absolutely necessary.

Thomas does not only focus on Rhodes. He demonstrates that most of the men that Rhodes dealt with could be, at times, just as morally ambiguous as he. Rhodes knew well that every man has his price, and demonstrated it again and again. Men in positions of power were irreconcilably opposed to Rhodes & his plans, at least until Rhodes made the right offer. The Victorians would had one believe that they were paragons of virtue and rectitude, but reading of Rhodes' dealings with them makes such a claim hardly believable.

At the end of his life, Rhodes began to appreciate that a man's legacy would not be measured in the wealth that he amassed or in the deals that he made. For Rhodes, that realization came too late. Most of his accomplishments are now hardly remembered, and the man himself is remembered now more with scorn and revulsion that awe and respect. Yet Rhodes was a remarkable man. Thomas makes the distinction between being a remarkable man and a great man, and in this finds the true tragedy of Rhodes' life: he had the talents to be a truly great man for all ages, but instead used these talents strictly to serve his own interests.

The book is quite easy to read, and is well-organized. To Thomas' credit, he does not report all the stories about Rhodes as gospel, and if the historical record is unclear on certain matters, he will say so. He also examines the conclusions made by other scholars on certain subjects and deals with this quite competently. I was pleasantly suprised, since he is not a historian by profession. I do note with interest that some events (such as the famous story of Rhodes dumping loads of diamonds into a bucket, just after Barney Barnato has purchased them) are reported by Thomas in the book as being stories which may or may not be true and cannot be verified by the historical record, but are presented in the "Masterpiece Theatre" production as being true. It is a good indication that in the book at least, Thomas is trying his best to be a responsible scholar.

This book is a great read for many reasons. On the one hand, it is well written and well argued. Thomas states his judgement on Rhodes in the beginning, which is a negative one, but then weighs what can and cannot be said about the man based on available evidence. He does not make sweeping statements of any kind. He also measures what past biographers have said against the evidence.

On the other hand, the story itself is fascinating. Thomas delivers a convincing portrait of Rhodes, one that punctures the heroic image of the "Colossus of Africa" while still revealing the clever and opportunistic nature of the man. We learn that Rhodes was a sickly child, whose frailty drove him to Africa when he was a teenager. Personal frailty lasted his whole life--and killed him in 1902. Rhodes was not much of a student, though he was driven to go to Oxford to acquire the right credentials. Rhodes had greater ambitions than amassing wealth alone, but we are led to wonder how committed an imperialist and an English chauvinist he was, given his opportunism. Thomas also presents an engaging description of the people around Rhodes. One of the more interesting is that of Barney Barnato, a British Jew who came to South Africa and amassed a larger fortune than Rhodes ever did and who appeared to be a better businessman than Rhodes as well.

The larger story of South Africa is also integrated into the tale. The diamond and gold rushes are described with great detail, including the largely tragic conflicts with native Africans. There is also much detail about the conflicts between the English and Boers, and even the role of Great Power interests (mostly British).

A general sense of adventure and opportunity about South Africa seems to exude from the story throughout. One of the most interesting examples in the book is the story of the relations between white prospectors--including Rhodes and his colleagues--and the native chief Lobengula, whole ruled in the north over the Matabeleland. The description of the massive and fearsome Lobengula, his treasures, his soldiers, his brutality and his ultimate defeat and suicide offer some of the most gripping narrative in the book.

There are not that many weaknesses to the book. A minor one might be that the book could benefit from more maps. There are 2 maps of southern Africa in the beginning of the book, but a few more maps throughout the book detailing the places where key events occurred would have been helpful.

I picked up this book while I was recuperating from a concussion, so when the heroine (one of 2) is lying in a hospital, suffering from a carjacking/shooting, the pain she goes through helped get me through my own.
What a powerful story. It really opened my eyes to S.Africa today. I had assumed S.Africa was the most developed African nation, and things had progressed quite nicely since the end of apartheid. Was I ever wrong! One thing I really liked was how del Fabbro described so many of the players in post-apartheid S. Africa and wove the history of the situation in such a way that didn't bog down the reader but helped him/her to understand the situation today more fully. I especially liked reading about the Dutch (Boer) faction, since I live in the Netherlands.
The story of two women and two young children is poignant and moved me to tears more than once. I really look forward to reading her next book which continues the story.
This book won a Christy award and I can see it was well-deserved! When I finished it, I thought to myself, this would make an excellent Oprah Book Club pick.

Powerful and poignant, for every South African that is courageous enough to have their eyes opened post-apartheid. Through Monica, we experience a journey that is all too familiar, wrestling with the wrongs of the past and feeling inspired for the future of this beautiful country.
For every non-South African - a true insight into a kaleidoscopic country. I laughed, I cringed, I cried - utterly brilliant. Sequel please?

This is our current Book Club book from my church. I was disapointed in this book. It was just not interesting, it was confusing to me switching back and forth between the two main characters. I found myself skimming through the book just in order to finish it before our Book Club meeting. Several of our other members really liked the book. I guess it just wasn't my kind of book. It did enlighten me to the types of prejudices in South Africa between the white classes and even the black classes. Amazing! I wouldn't want to live there, that's for sure.

To be completely honest, I wasn't looking forward to reading "inspirational fiction," but I was COMPLETELY SURPRISED to find myself caught up in this story (and now halfway through the sequel). Sure, it reads a little like a Hallmark movie, but one that is set amid violence and an AIDS epidemic that South Africa's leadership has been extremely slow to address.

I had the great fortune to have the author present at a recent book club discussion of her work. Hearing her first-hand accounts of the violence and politics only made me more appreciative of the book. If you are interested in the country, or are drawn in the least to the images that Oprah and others deliver to Americans in neat, tidy packages, you will enjoy The Road to Home.

This is a lovely book with a story that builds to a very powerful end. It moves so subtly you almost don't realize how caught up you are until you are there.

Two women become friends, despite all the barriers that exist between white and black people in post-Apartheid South Africa. Both women find themselves in situations that force them to evaluate what's important in their lives. In the process, they become important to each other.

I really loved this book. Twice it brought me to tears. The writing is lovely, and the message is both hopeful and kind.

I reviewed this book for my gigh school class after hearing all the praise for it. I was fairly shocked by the unrealistic portrayal of diabetics, how the author irresponsibly portrays them as mentally ill. As for the story itself, it is not terrible, but very bland. The writing was another problem, the author felt that she should use a foriegn dialect without insight as to the meaning of what to me were nonsense words.
Overall I would steer clear of this book, especially if your thinking about a lesson with it, I'm not sure these other critics read the same book as I, if they did, I would have to wonder what substance they abused while reading it.

I thought this was a really fantastic book, the language, the plot and the characters were all very. . . alluring. Sarina's friend Boima supplies a series of dramatic stories throughout the book and Sarina's mother's diabetec probelems are extremely captivating, a must read for anyone who would love to have a change from the everyday world.

BEYOND THE MANGO TREE is a sparkling debut. Ms. Zemser is a unique and jazzy talent. I'm looking forward to more of her work.

Beyond the Mango Tree was an exciting four star book.It is about an American girl who moves to Liberia,in Africa because her dad is offered a job here.It was exciting because one night thieves came to her house and the guard was hit on the head and almost died and Sarina, the main character, was left alone.This book is also sad because even when Sarina doesn't do anything wrong her mother ties her to a tree and makes her stand in a dark muddy puddle. I have never read anything like this book before and recommend it to readers of all ages.

This is a wonderful story of friendship which crosses boundaries of class, race and gender. In spite of Sarina's momentary jealousy and suspicion, in the end she learns that love is important and transcends the boundaries her small world.

Original interview on Small Wars [...]
"It is called The General's Book on Rwanda, and, right, the General is Rwandan Major General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, who was the head of the Nationale Gendarmerie during the period of time in which what has come to be referred to as the "Rwandan Genocide" of 100 days (7 April to 4 July 1994) took place. And everybody knows the boilerplate of "800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus slaughtered by extremist Hutus." But, so far at least, my writing hasn't really been about any kind of personal story of the General's life. It's about what really happened in Rwanda between 1 October 1990 and sometime after the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took over (or "liberated," as they would have it) the country on 4 July 1994 -- because the mainstream version couldn't be further from the truth. [1]"

Pick a tragedy and you will almost always find an alternate conspiracy theory to go with the accurate accounts. Rwanda is no different. The above extract comes from an interview with Mick Collins who holds that all that happened in Rwanda was due to US greed. Mr. Collins is not alone in making that assertion. Robin Philpot's book Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard, as listed on the Taylor Report is another. Keith Harmon Snow is another conspiracy theorist who pushes the US conspiracy theory as does Wayne Madsen. The truly sad thing about these alternate theories--aside from their use of fantasy as fact--is they lend weight to the Hutu Power's mantra that they were victims of the second genocide, that the first genocide of 800,000 to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus was an unfortunate result of war between them and a foreign aggressor, namely Tutsi "aliens" bent on Hutu destruction..

Linda Melvern's Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide handily demolishes those myths because she documents the intimate planning and meticulous record keeping that went into execution of the Rwandan genocide. Note that in 1991 Rwandan Major General Augustin Ndindiliyimana originally proposed creating the self-defense militias that became monstrous killing machines over the next three years. That same general as commander of the National Gendarmerie was a member of the "Zero Network" used by the conspirators of the genocide. His case is hardly unusual; there was nothing spontaneous about the Rwandan genocide.

Even as the interim government of Rwanda crossed to safety in Zaire in July 1994, Melvern quotes Prime Minister Kambanda proclaiming, "We have lost the military battle but the war is by no means over because we have the people behind us." [2] That statement and hundreds of pages of government records, testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and countless first person accounts from the genocidal killers document what the genocide was all about: continued Hutu political domination of Rwanda.

Trite commentators then and today refer to the genocide as tribal conflict, as if it is a lesser form of warfare for lesser beings. Such statements minimally miss the point that the Hutus and the Tutsis are not tribes. Maximally they ignore the reality that ethnic struggle--especially ethnic struggle on the scale advocated, planned, and executed by the Hutu Power bloc in Rwanda--is absolutely political and terribly final in deciding who has power and who does not. The loser dies. Kambanda and his cohorts sought to use genocide as a final solution to any challenge to their absolute political power in Rwanda. Just as the Nazis kept the trains running to the extermination camps in the failing moments of the Third Reich, Kambanda's government concentrated on killing Tutsis as they lost their fight with the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Melvern's book documents that fanatical focus on extermination.

Melvern does make a couple of errors that are likely to irritate informed readers. Most blatant is her referral to the US parachute operation in Mogadishu, Somalia in October 1993.[3] Referring to Mogadishu as greatest humiliation to the US military since Vietnam is needless and inaccurate hyperbole. Another is over emphasizing the effect of Paul Kagame's brief and aborted sojourn at the US Army Command and General Staff College. As a former instructor there, I doubt that many even noticed that Kagame was leaving until he was gone. His abilities as a tactician and strategist owe little to his short stay on the banks of the Missouri River.

But those are minor faults, mentioned only in the hopes they might be corrected in a future edition. I recommend Ms. Melvern's book to all. It is a balanced account of a Rwanda unbalanced by war and genocide. Don't waste your time, money, or brain cells on the conspiracy theorists. Read Linda Melvern's work on how the true conspiracy to commit genocide unfolded.
Thomas Odom
Aurthor, Journey Into Darkness: Genocide In Rwanda (Texas a & M University Military History Series)

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[1] Mick Collins, Interviewed by John Steppling, Rwanda: The General's Story A Conversation at the Swans Café..., [...] June 20, 2005. Collins continues his claim with, " First, the short version of how and why the media disinformed and continues to disinform: Unlike what Clinton and Albright pissed and moaned about -- how they were sorry they didn't pay more attention to Central Africa until it was too late -- the U.S. was 100 percent behind the destruction of Rwanda (see Robin Philpot's interview with Boutros Boutros-Ghali). It was part of a larger plan to bring down Mobutu and open the region to total dependence on Western financial, commercial, and military institutions. The bookends to this monstrous nation-o-cide were the invasion of Rwanda from Uganda by forces of the RPF on 1 October 1990, and the shooting down of the Falcon 50 business jet that was carrying the Hutu presidents of Rwanda (Juvenal Habyarimana) and Burundi (Cyprien Ntaryamira) on their way home from peace talks in Dar-es-Salam on the evening of 6 April 1994; again, by the RPF, on the order of their commander and the current president (military dictator's more like it) Paul Kagame."

[2] Linda Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide, New York: Verso, 2006 edition, p. 248.

[3] Melvern, 79.

A couple of years ago, I realized that I had not educated myself on the tragedy of Rwanda, so I picked up this book. It's very helpful, but could be much better if it were better organized chronologically and also if it had a "scorecard", i.e. a basic outline of the major players. To its credit, it has maps, a chronology, and extensive notes, but the names of the major players are really confusing and that makes it hard to follow from time to time.

I would also have liked to see more substantive interpretation. There are repeated suggestions that the French government was supportive of the murderous Hutu regime, but that is never really explained or explored sufficiently. I would also have liked to see more discussion and analysis of the role of Christian churches.

But this, along with the films "Hotel Rwanda" and "Sometimes in April" is probably a pretty good place to start if you want to know what happened in Rwanda and what is happening still in other parts of Africa.

I agree 100% with the review by Mike Kerrigan, but I am a little more severe than him in my rating of the book. The book truly reads more like a factual report of who said what to whom in what location and at what time of the day than like a telling of one of the most important historical events of the last few decades.

I definitely liked the fact that the book was loaded with information, but I would have liked it to be presented differently for an easier reading. For instance, the emphasis seems to be more on who said what than on what actually happened, which makes it difficult to understand the sequence of events; too many names are constantly mentioned and one gets lost and has to flip back frequently. Another thing that forces you to flip back often is the fact that the author often skips back and forth in time and place.

All in all, if you are familiar with the whole episode, you will most likely enjoy the level of detail of this book and appreciate learning who made which decisions. However, if what you want is a good and thorough introduction into the Rwandan genocide, this book is probably not the best as it might cause too much confusion, I would recommend Dallaire's book instead.

Melvern's book is a deeply researched work that provides a detailed account of the events leading up to and throughout the Rwandan genocide. Her work with the International Criminal Tribunal clearly comes through in the book. This is both good and bad.

It's good because of the level of detail she provides and her strong ability to reconstruct events using an extensive collection of sources. Unfortunately the book sometimes reads like a report for the tribunal; it documents the people involved in orchestrating a particular crime and its details, but in a sterile way that doesn't seem to tap into the human emotions that the murders should evoke. Also, her familiarity with the people she documents caused the easy usage of a multitude of names in the book that were difficult for this reader to separate without a lot of page-flipping to recall their place within the story.

That said, this book won't disappoint anyone looking to understand the origins and events of the Rwandan genocide. The author does an excellent job of showing the failures of the Western response to the crisis without deflecting blame from the central characters within Rwanda who spent years planning and executing the genocide.

This book is probably the perfect compliment to `We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.' This book is less detailed than Melvern's work, but focuses on documenting the genocide through the stories of survivors and thus provides more of a human element.

Indeed the world did fail Rwanda as the author points out in the book about the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. First off, Egypt and France sell huge quantities of arms to a government in a civil war. The French even send military advisers to train the Hutu Power militias. This advisory team has the intials C.R.A.P., something easily indentifiable with the French. The British and Americans downplay the fact that a genocide is about to occur and even urge no U.N. peacemakers be sent to the country. Boutros Ghali-U.N. Secretary General and one of those who earlier sold weapons to the Rwandan Hutus downplays the possibility of large scale killings and genocide. When the genocide does occur, they are in disbelief and don't react for two months while 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus are killed. Finally when the bankrupt Hutu Power regime is in its last gasp, the French send humanitarian assistance to the Hutus.
As the author shows, there is plenty of blame to go around. The Americans and British prevented help from being sent to prevent a genocide. The French supported a genocidal regime, and in my opinion don't even deserve to be on the Security Council. Hutu Power hopefully has been consigned to the dustbin of history. The U.N. is a paper tiger with feckless authority. The world did indeed turn its back on 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. A good read about a tragic event.

This novel written by John Briley, demonstrates the courage and struggle of Steve Biko, as well as other black citizens.
The story took place in South Africa during the Apartheid period. Black people were treated unfairly, and deserve no rights. This story also gives Biko's idea on equality to the readers.
The author describe vividly about black people's lives in South Africa. In the story' it show black people participating an underground speech made by Steve Biko. All the black people wish that they could be the same as the white people are, that's why they are there, though it's risky.
I am pleased with Biko' spirit. He demonstrates human's basic desire-freedom.
This novel is very easy to understand, and it's the best non-fiction novel I ever read. However, this novel is too predictable, so I give it 4 stars out of 5.

This novel written by John Briley, demonstrates the courage and struggle of Steve Biko, as well as other black citizens.
The story took place in South Africa during the Apartheid period. Black people were treated unfairly, and deserve no rights. This story also gives Biko's idea on equality to the readers.
The author describe vividly about black people's lives in South Africa. In the story' it show black people participating an underground speech made by Steve Biko. All the black people wish that they could be the same as the white people are, that's why they are there, though it's risky.
I am pleased with Biko' spirit. He demonstrates human's basic desire-freedom.
This novel is very easy to understand, and it's the best non-fiction novel I ever read. However, this novel is too predictable, so I give it 4 stars out of 5.

This novel written by John Briley, demonstrates the courage and struggle of Steve Biko, as well as other black citizens.
The story took place in South Africa during the Apartheid period. Black people were treated unfairly, and deserve no rights. This story also gives Biko's idea on equality to the readers.
The author describe vividly about black people's lives in South Africa. In the story' it show black people participating an underground speech made by Steve Biko. All the black people wish that they could be the same as the white people are, that's why they are there, though it's risky.
I am pleased with Biko' spirit. He demonstrates human's basic desire-freedom.
This novel is very easy to understand, and it's the best non-fiction novel I ever read. However, this novel is too predictable, so I give it 4 stars out of 5.

John Briley did a very good job on describing Biko's life, as well as the lives of other black citizens in South Africa during the Apartheid period.
The protagonist of this story is a newspaper editor, Donald Woods. He is the white man who agrees with Biko's idea, which is that, all the black people and white people live together peacefully and deserve equal rights. However, tragically, the police killed Biko. After that, Woods get him into trouble, because he is investigating on Biko's death.

This story is a sad story, but it shows the spirit of those who sacrifice for freedom in South Africa. This story is very predictable, so I give it 4 stars out of 5.

This is the book which tells us the story of a black banned south african, who thinks black should get free, and insists not using violence, but words. By chance he meets a reporter named Donald Woods and they ge to be friends.

But as their friendship develops so does the south african wihes to catch him. Finally he's caught and the editor banned. But he'll strugle to get freedom and publish a book about these black leader.

Sad but true and exciting story of the late seventies, definetely recommendable.

Vijay Prashad's book "The Darker Nations" is a mix between modern history, political pamphlet and political economic analysis. Subtitled "A People's History of the Third World", it should not be thought of as a history of this part of the world as such, but as a history of the concept of the 'Third World' and its political implications.

Prashad's main thesis is that the Third World project was a national liberation project, generally progressive and secular, born out of anti-colonialism and popular mass mobilization to achieve independence for formerly colonized nations. Prashad describes the various institutions and movements all over the world involved in this, their respective leaders and backgrounds, and why they succeeded or failed (mostly the latter). He puts many well known institutions and developments in the Third World into this context, from OPEC to the 'Asian Tigers', which gives new insight into familiar phenomena, while at the same time chronicling the often unfortunately short history of the defeat of mass leftist movements in the underdeveloped world.

The general gist here is that whereas the initial national liberation governments were varied in their class background and aims, they all came from mass mobilizations against imperialism and as such were imbued with a developmental, egalitarian and nationalist-secular ethos. However, the combined force of the world market and the neo-colonialist states (essentially the entire First World) defeated these movements and funded and enabled reactionary movements in these Third World nations, leading to the destruction of the left in many places where it was formerly strong, such as Indonesia and Sudan. The now familiar story of IMF 'structural adjustment', unfair terms of trade, regressive policies on the part of local elites and bourgeoisie supported (sometimes myopically) by First World governments, and the selfish approaches of supposed defenders of international socialism like the USSR and China combine to tell the tale of why the Third World project failed.

The book is evocative, strong and well-written. One could make two objections to it: the first being that while Prashad is understandably enthousiastic about the initial idea of left-wing, secular anti-imperialism in the Third World, one might say he tends to portray it as more viable and as better than it was, and the second being the related charge that Prashad is often much better at describing how a given movement failed than why this happened. The book could definitely have benefited from a more in-depth political economic approach, explaining why exactly Third World attempts at egalitarian development failed from Tanzania to Indonesia, and how the reactionary forces managed and still manage to have the support to stay in power; a good example of this is the chapter on Singapore, which explains the regressive nature of the Singaporean elite state (as well as those of Taiwan and South Korea), but it does not explain very well why they nonetheless had much more success at development than African or Latin American left-wing governments did.

On the other hand, the actual political chronicling and the 'snapshots' of the various nations and their political histories in terms of anti-imperialist development are very good, and Prashad is an engaged and compelling author. Recommended as an addition to more specific political economic studies of the Third World.

In 1927, two hundred delegates from thirty-seven states and regions gathered in Brussels and formed the League Against Imperialism. In doing so they gave an institutional voice to the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the vast majority of the people in the world who eventually found their countries sandwiched between the "first" world of the United States and the "second" world of the Soviet Union. Not wanting to align with either empire, from that meeting onward the "third world" (a word coined in 1952 by Albert Sauvy) became a prolonged international project and not just a place of misery. The setting was fraught with irony, for Belgium was then led by King Leopold II, whose shameless pillage of the Congo had few peers. In this history of the majority of the world's peoples, Vijay Prashad traces their elusive quest, its problems and pitfalls, and the causes and consequences of its failure.

Prashad's organization takes one on a global tour; each one of his eighteen chapter titles is a major city of the third world project. In Part 1 he considers the quest (Paris, Brussels, Bandung, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Tehran, Belgrade, and Havana); in Part 2 the pitfalls (Algiers, La Paz, Bali, Tawang, Caracas, and Arusha); then in Part 3 the "assassinations" of the project (New Delhi, Kingston, Singapore, Mecca). The third world sought three goals, he says: political independence and self-rule; peaceful co-existence and non-violent international relations; and using the United Nations as the means to push its agenda, all in contrast to the militarism, economic dominance, and ostensible superiority of the American and Soviet spheres. Along the way Prashad tackles most every aspect of this struggle, including education, bureaucratism, land reform, suffrage, religion, revolutionary violence, foreign aid, transnational corporations, the "villigization" of millions of people, the debt crisis, natural resources, and women's discrimination.

The third world project failed badly for many complex reasons. After freeing themselves from the shackles of imperial overlords, countries tended to centralize power in the state instead of establishing effective social democracies, stifled dissent, ignored rule of law, plundered national treasure, and set up military regimes ruled by dictator-thugs ("Nothing good comes from a military dictatorship."). The predator first world continued their economic plunder thanks to the threat of overwhelming military, political, and economic means (globalization, the IMF, etc.). And thus the "catastrophic demise" of the third world project. Crushing debt and widening income gaps between rich and poor nations are only the most obvious signs that most people in the world remain marginalized by their own states and exploited by the first world. But at least they now have a history of their struggle, thanks to Prashad.

This book is an ambitious effort to chart the fortunes of the political project of unifying the postcolonial world into 'the third world'. It is not, however, a 'people's' history, either in the senses of charting the demographic transformations of ordinary people (literacy, urbanization, etc) or anthropologically describing how they understood the dramatic events (revolutions, counterrevolutions, development experiments, etc) unfolding. It is almost exclusively concerned with the major leaders and some of the intellectuals and artists who shaped the consciousness of the period. Indeed, even if it was not titled 'people's history', I think it could be faulted by being a little vague about 'the people'. In any case, the book is basically divided into three parts. The first section, 'Quest', considers some themes (economics, nationalism, gender, etc) through the optic of major conferences. The second, 'pitfalls', highlights places that epitomize themes like military coups and socialism from above. The third section, 'Assassinations' describes the demise of the third world as a subject as a result of neoliberalism, the IMF, the rise of East Asia, and religious fundamentalism. In all sections, Prashad tends to move between the focus of the chapter and historical geographical events that are far afield and occur before and after the moment in question. The effect can be a little vertiginous. Certainly he deserves credit for attempting such an expansive work, and his knowledge about the time period appears to be vast. However, I found his organization a little too tidy, and his political perspective restricted by his focus on state leaders. Particularly since he regards the UN as something of an instrument for third world advancement (an interesting contrast with Perry Anderson, who claims its just a front for the US), why does he disregard the international conferences held under its auspices in the last fifteen years regarding the environment, women, and racism? Although attended by people from countries in the North as well as the South, at these forums it is probably fair to say that Southern perspectives tended to prevail and throw the North on the defensive. And why is not a word breathed about the World Social Forum? Is it because he regards NGOs (also almost completely absent from his book) as instruments of Northern domination, or because he regards social movements as insignificant compared to states? The absence of any discussion of these issues seems almost sectarian, as does his fairly crude analysis of religion (focused on Saudi-backed Wahhabi Islam--the Iranian revolution is practically unmentioned). Finally, he doesn't seem to have noticed, as have some other writers, that a number of third world states have begun to recover from neoliberalism and seem to be gradually reasserting themselves.

The Third World is a Cold War term, meaning mostly former nations that were ruled by Europeans and won their political independence in the decades after the second world war. That's how most people understand it anyway. It started off as a term of empowerment and hope by the leaders of the newly independent countries in the 1950s, after years of trying to bind the colonized into a single cause. These leaders saw that the First capitalist world and the Second Soviet-bloc world needed the Third world for its resources, people, and support in the global cold war, and they did not want to be pawns anymore.

The Third World Project started in the 1955 at the Bandung Asian-African Conference, when the Nonaligned Movement was founded (NAM) in opposition to the 1st and 2nd Worlds. From here, the Third World was split by internal divisions, attacks by the West and Eastern blocs, and finally outright destruction of the "Third World" by economic policies pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States, as well as political and military attacks by the USA and its allies. In "The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World" by Vijay Prashad, the history of this push for unity, the contradictions of the class of leaders in trying to build this better Third world, the splits within the movement, and the final assassination of the Third World Project.

The book switches between different locations and different situations. Prashad points out that there was a strange contradiction in the work of building a Third World. The ruling class of the decolonized countries supported the new rulers, in many places, who wanted to stand up for themselves. But at the same time, as time went on, they also supported all-powerful dictators and neo-liberal economics that lead to the resources of the country being drained out like vampires (leading to continuation of places which have some of the richest resources of the world and some of the poorest people, like in Congo.) Projects like OPEC started as the "darker nations" tried to control their own politics, though it soon disintegrated into just rulers enriching themselves. In the end, they worked better with ruling classes of the 1st world than the people of their own countries.



Prashad goes to each place, from Singapore, to Indonesia and Suharto, to Baghdad, and explores the rise and fall of the Third World. Today, he ends, the Third World is dead. However, an international movement, free of imposed movements from above or directly by the elites of the government, has arisen and the world is changing to oppose the US. The book is an interesting look at an attempt by the leaders of former colonized places to fight back, though it can be a little disorienting traveling across so many places so fast (which is probably what trying to organize all those places to act together would have been like.) How the First World was able to destroy this movement is a pretty good lesson of history for any person to know.

This book gets high marks for its sheer wealth of information, though it's not a casual reading experience. Here Vijay Prashad has continued the spirit of Howard Zinn's classic "A People's History of the United States," and this book is a strong inaugural release in what will hopefully be a continuing series. Here Prashad constructs the "Third World" as a Cold War term for all the disadvantaged nations that were caught in the crossfire between the First and Second Worlds, and were usually abused as pawns in the era's strictly bilateral games of geopolitics and development. Specifically, most of Prashad's work concerns the Non-Aligned Movement of nations that tried to resist taking sides in the bilateral Cold War, and attempted to build a coalition of nations that could stand as a viable entity with its own ideologies and political strategies. Prashad provides a wealth of little-known information on the nations and leaders that attempted to build this movement, and the political and economic realities faced by the peoples and societies that were being used and left behind by the superpowers.

Those familiar with Zinn's book will recognize the travails of the passionate historian who can't figure out how to synthesize vast quantities of historical knowledge. The first half of this book is tough to digest, consisting of an interminable laundry list of names and events with little over-arching analysis, giving the impression that Prashad is trying to describe every single thing that happened during the Cold War era outside of the US, Europe, and USSR. Occasional snippets of theory also seem forced and awkward, such as Prashad's examinations of unnatural borders or the behavior of military dictators. Fortunately, the book improves in the second half, as Prashad manages to develop his previously disconnected bits of history and theory into a strong overall analysis of how the superpowers "assassinated" (in his rather hyperbolic term) the Third World movement and its promises of social and economic progress, through globalization, conquest, and corporatism. Most importantly, Prashad does not refrain from criticizing the Third World nations too, as many of them have compounded their own misery by reverting to old styles of inequality and dictatorship. While this book has some real readability issues, and Prashad can sometimes be faulted for steering historical data toward his own theories, the reader is rewarded with a great amount of knowledge on peoples and leaders who have been forgotten in the histories of winners. [~doomsdayer520~]

A very slow read and pretty depressing. Vocabulary difficult - maybe common in South Africa.

Great historical depiction of the Apartide in South Africa. Beautifully written; it reads as a historical memoir. Plot not that engaging. Very interesting protagonist point of view. By the end of the book, the question of 'accurate' memory lingers.

One of the lessons to be learned from The Persistence of Memory is that a photographic memory does not necessarily tell the larger truth. The short and perfectly recollected moments in the life of Paul Sweetbread (the protagonist with perfect recall) add up to a whole that is somehow less than the sum of its parts. Sweetbread is unconvincing and unreliable as a narrator precisely because his grip on the details is so startlingly clear.

Cameras lie, Eprile tells us. The propaganda corps of the South African army stage scenes where soldiers play football with local children. Judicious cropping is all that is needed to make the perfect observer into one that cannot be trusted. The comparison with Sweetbread as witness is inevitable.

I can think of very few metaphors that would work better for the process of truth and reconciliation in South Africa. It is a brilliant idea for a book, and one that seems to fit perfectly with the situation that it is describing.

The flaw in the book is that it seems to try to do too much above and beyond developing this central idea. The Persistence of Memory is also a coming of age story, and also has a lot to do with the response of Paul as a human (and not a camera) to what he sees in Namibia. There is a lot of material, and unfortunately the beautifully written individual scenes do not seem to gel very effectively into a larger whole. As a reading experience, I found it disjointed and ultimately unsympathetic.

It might sound strange to sum up a review by saying that while I admire the book immensely, I am not certain how widely I would recommend it. I certainly think that it would be of interest to people who have read a lot in the literature of South Africa. I can also tell you that it makes a satisfactory book for a book club. We had a lot to talk about after it was finished.

It is at least an impressive effort. Eprile is a writer to watch for the future.

Read it for yourself to decide what you think.

South Africa from 1968 - 2000 is revealed in all its cultural variety and internal stresses through the life story of Paul Sweetbread, an overweight Jewish boy who is an outsider to everyone. Neither a Boer nor an Englishman, he is also not really a Jew, since his family has never been observant, leaving him without any common roots that connect him to his Caucasian countrymen. A person with a photographic memory, he is, from the outset, a victim of his memory. Because he can quote from his schoolbooks exactly, teachers think he cheats; his fellow students torment him.

As he sets the scene and creates a fully drawn personality for Paul, the author recreates his early school and home life, his relationships with black servants, and his family history, including the death of his father. The action intensifies when Paul, having finished school in 1987, joins the South African Defense Force for two years, instead of going to college. South Africa is nervously protecting its borders against what it believes are communist insurgents, while also facing threats from within. Apartheid has been challenged, the British and Boers are at odds, and African nationalism is growing.

Paul's wartime experiences, recreated in stunning detail, further develop his character as he observes Captain Lyddie, "The perfect specimen of South African manhood," engaging in racial brutality, described in passages of great power which embed themselves in Paul's perfect memory and in the reader's. The battle for survival of South Africa and the changes which will be necessary as the country changes from white to black rule are ever at the forefront of the novel. Paul's empathy for the Bushmen, whom the SADF uses as trackers, is palpable, while his fear, engendered during a photo assignment in a black township, reflects his awareness of the dangers from within.

Thoughtful and challenging but filled with wry humor, Eprile's novel presents events from Paul Sweetbread's life slowly, sometimes deliberately omitting important information in order to maintain suspense and let the reader come to know Paul through his life and actions, rather than through background information. He creates a sympathetic picture of an extremely sensitive young man who finds himself in impossible situations which mark him for life. His philosophical musings near the end of the book about memory and metaphor raise important questions about society and national "memory," how a country constructs its memories of the past in order to make it acceptable, and careful readers will savor the language and sheer intelligence of Eprile's observations. Mary Whipple

After reading several books by J.M. Coetzee, I was more or less prepared for the conditions and incidents portrayed by Mr. Eprile. However, the experience here is that of a person maturing in the closing years of apartheid, rather than the older characters in Mr. Coetzee's works. The result is a view into the vulnerability of a young person trying to adapt to a collapsing racist society, the lack of alternatives for living a morally fulfilling life. Perhaps it's this lack of structure in the experience that leads to a shortage of structure in the novel. While some of the parts are intensely interesting, and all are worth reading, most can be read without reference to the others. The lead character's gift of memory is a unifying factor, but really not vital to most of the events. The writing is outstanding, though it might benefit from cutting, and the work is entertaining despite the grim subject at its center.