Nonfiction, translated from the Dutch by Liz Walters
Grove Press, 2008. 296p.
A sign of a great author is the ability to represent the viewpoints of good guys and bad guys alike. A lesser author, the reasoning goes, would be unable to delve into the characters and would bring out a one-sided work. The journalist Lieve Joris is certainly of the first camp. The Rebels’ Hour painstakingly depicts general Assani, a troubled rebel leader from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo who leaves his life as a high plains cattle herder to become Vice President of a country the size of Western Europe.
Read the full review, here.
Translated from the Dutch by Liz Walters
Grove Press, 2008. 296p.
Our next piece will examine The Rebels’ Hour, a story depicting the life of a general from the war-torn eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This prize-winning work was laboriously written over ten years by Belgian journalist Lieve Joris as the country was wracked by a civil war that claimed more than 4 million lives. Part fiction and part non-fiction, the book follows the growth of a simple high plains herdsmen into a military giant who surrounded himself with kidogos - the little ones.
Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic.
Translated from the Bosnian by Stela Tomasevic.
Archipelago, 2004, 195 pages.
Sarajevo Marlboro is a phenomenal collection of short stories set in war time Bosnia. Delivered by a master storyteller, it is evident why this work won the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize upon publication. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) served as an enduring warning to war mongerers in its depiction of German soldiers in World War I. Jergovic’s work delves even more deeply into themes that touch us all, beyond a soundtrack of mortars and shell shock.
Click here for the full review.
