Books
Ama, by Manu Herbstein
Picador Africa, 2005. 374 pages.
To call Manu Herbstein’s Ama ambitious would be to belittle the fact that the author has, in many respects, succeeded in creating a grand narrative of the Atlantic slave trade that spans kingdoms, nations, and continents.
Read the full review here.
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.
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.
The Soccer War
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Translated from the Polish by William Brand
Vintage International, 1992
Travels with Herodotus
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska
Knopf, 2007
This pair of books by the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski brims with the creativity and insight of great fiction. The Soccer War details the explorations of Poland’s sole reporter with a ‘third world’ beat, from African independence movements to Cold War flashpoints in Central America. Travels with Herodotus is Kapuscinski’s last work and is more of a meandering memoir about the shaping of a journalist who met dozens of world leaders and thrust himself into the middle of conflicts under the drudge of the pen.
