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Title: The Heart of Redness: A Novel by Zakes Mda ISBN: 0-312-42174-5 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: South African Life among the Natives
Comment: The story intermingles two time frames: Both share the same family and Xhosa location on the shores of the Indian Ocean. One part tells the story of the British war against the native tribe in the mid-19th century - the war now known as the Zulu war. The other part deals with the present time.
Camugu comes from Johannesburg and tries to fit into the somewhat primitive village of Oorloha. He lands in the middle of the fight that has been going on for 150 years. In those days, the teenage prophetess Nongqawuse Told the tribe that all cattle had be killed and the harvest destroyed. Thus the tribe was split between Believers and Unbelievers, each group blaming the other for whatever went wrong. And so the verbal fighting goes back and forth.
Xhosa used to be a real tribe, but nowadays only the language survives as part of the Bantu languages. That accounts for the click sounds that are mentioned. The Zulu war did take place, of course, and the prophesy also happened. The story is interwoven with the local history.
The narrative has won prizes and has been called "brilliant' and loaded with genuine mythic power. Unfortunately, I can't see it that way. The story drags on and on without there being much of a concrete action. The two time periods are so intermingled as to confuse the reader who constantly has to check the names to place it correctly. Untranslated local words and expressions can be used to good effect, but here they are overdone. And the story itself is not new, not exciting, and utterly predictable.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Masterpiece by a Master Storyteller
Comment: This is one of the most beautiful books I have read in years. Mda skillfullly evokes the tensions in contemporary South Africa for blacks caught between the tug of Western, technological culture and their identity in long-standing traditions. The story is given added substance by Mda's recounting the history of similar tensions from the nineteenth century, thus creating deep emotions that propel the characters. The story mixes family feuds, spats between the sexes, and sober deliberations about community versus individual choices, all told with a level of humor that underscores rather than undermines the importance of these issues for South Africa today.
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Title: Ways of Dying : A Novel by Zakes Mda ISBN: 0312420919 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Madonna of Excelsior : A Novel by Zakes Mda ISBN: 0374200084 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 15 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History by Joanna Waley-Cohen ISBN: 0393320510 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Green Gold: The Empire of Tea by Alan Macfarlane, Iris Macfarlane ISBN: 0091883091 Publisher: Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group) Pub. Date: 06 February, 2003 |
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Title: Ambivalent Conquests : Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570 by Inga Clendinnen ISBN: 0521379814 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 27 January, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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