OBOC - Ecuador

Jorge Icaza's novel Huasipungo ("The Villagers") is often credited for exposing the plight of Native Americans in Ecuador under the Spanish Colonizers. While many Latin American writers are famous for magical realism, this novel has none of that - it is harsh and it is real. The novel was published first in 1934 and in the English translation the introduction sadly notes how unlike in the Grapes of Wrath (which it is often compared to), the plight of the Indians are not any different even three decades later, which cannot be said of the Okies of Steinbeck.

In the book, the landowning elites, the clergy and the white masters form an unholy trinity exploiting the land and resources of Ecuador and in this process treat the Indians as disposables. There are also the Cholos of mixed race who are in a slightly more favorable position than the Indians and who often did the dirty work for their masters.

Don Alfonso the landowner decides to lay a road with Indian labor so that the whiteman can bring in his equipment and machinery to exploit the virgin forests. To achieve this aim, he enlists the help of the local clergyman and the cholos to drive fear (of god, of law) into the heart of the Indian. Andres Chiliquinga is the tragic hero of this novel who loses just about everything, his limbs, his cunshi, his home, his village and above all his dignity before he leads an unsuccessful rebellion against the exploiters.

If you thought the Indian was at the bottom of this hierarchy (the white, the landowner, the cholo and the indian), you are only partly correct. The Indian woman is at the absolute bottom - facing rape and harassment from the masters and violence from her man - your heart reaches out to the Cunshis of this world - when one doesn't even have control over the milk produced from one's breasts there is no doubt as to one's position in society.

Despite the bleak nature of the book, it is a must read book as it is a story that humanity needs to understand. Coincidentally, around the time i was wrapping up this book, I also heard about the controversy surrounding REDD which is now the new green. While voices like Jane Goodall, Wangari Mathai are coming out in favor of REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), what about the indigenous people everywhere? There was a time when they were evicted as the world needed to clear out their forests. Now are they facing eviction as the world decides to protect their forests lands? I don't know the answer and I haven't studied the issue in-depth - but when I heard the Ecuadorian President say he was in favor of REDD despite protests from the indigenous people, I couldn't help thinking about the novel I just finished.

OBOC - Dominican Republic

Other than the fact that sportsmen from the Dominican Republic are legendary in Baseball in America, I have to accept that there was nothing more I knew about both Baseball and the Dominican Republic! "The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao", the pulitzer prize winning novel from Junot Diaz set to fix at least one of those knowledge gaps.  And just when I was feeling embarrassed about not even knowing that the US occupied the DR between 1916-24, Diaz assures me not to worry as a 100 years from now, no one will remember the occupation of Iraq! Collective Amnesia is a byproduct of the passage of time after all.

The novel is a chronicle of the life of Oscar de Leon as narrated by his sister Lola and Yunior (Lola's ex boyfriend and Oscar's roommate in Rutgers). Oscar is the antithesis of everything a stereotypical Dominican male is expected to be - he is overweight, no athlete, nerdy, obsessed with the "genres" (or speculative fiction as it is called these days), and certainly has no success with women. Growing up in Paterson, New Jersey Oscar's life is condemned to loneliness which he fills by writing profusely stories centered around the end of the world.

Intertwined with this story, is the story of Oscar and Lola's mother Beli, whom we first meet as the overworked, domineering, cancer stricken, iron fisted, rebellion crushing, single immigrant mom struggling to keep her family together in America, and you almost have no sympathy for her. As the story moves from Jersey to Santo Domingo we get a completely different glimpse of the young Beli and her father Abelard and how their life was affected by the iron handed dictator Trujillo. Despite the title, this story is as much Beli's story as it is Oscar's. As we follow along Oscar as he moves from Jersey to the DR on the trail of the only woman who gives him the time of day and a bit more than that, we follow Beli's life in reverse. The DR is as much a character in this story as any of the others. We get a great glimpse into the socio political, cultural history of the DR replete with fukus (curses) and zafas (counter spells). 


While Oscar's story could be just another story of an immigrant nerd who is trying to fit in, where it stands out is in Junot Diaz's rawness.  He doesn't shy away from the tragic, violent ending. The writing style was so fresh and Yunior's voice narrating this story is testimony to Diaz's talent. Yunior is in every sense the complete opposite of Oscar - not as well read, profane, extremely successful with women, cool, and raw - yet at the same time seems to have a sensitivity and understanding of Oscar that it simply works!

Moving seamlessly from the present to the past, from Spanish to English, from profanity to the references and tributes to Tolkien, from the trivialities of everyday life to magical realism, from an adolescent's wet dreams to dying for love, Diaz triumphs! Ultimately, this is a coming of age story of both the cerebral ghetto nerd and the machismo casanova, the former fatally facing his fuku and the latter narrating the story as a zafa to his own fuku.

OBOC - Djibouti

An average person's view of Africa today is an amalgam of all the headlines and front page news - war, disease, poverty, resource curse etc. Abdourahman Waberi in "The United States of Africa" turns this view on its head and portrays a "what if" scenario. What if Africa was the richest continent in the world and was therefore sought after by millions of Caucasian refugees from Euramerica? In this topsy- turvy world, Switzerland is a war torn country ravaged by linguistic and ethnic differences; Afghan, Haitian, Laotian Aid Agencies distribute flour and provisions and poor children from France and Luxembourg survive on food surpluses from North Korea and Ethiopia. It is a world where Human Rights Watch report on the North American "quagmire" and one where alternative, liberal voices claim that the biggest threat to African Unity is the "irrational fear of the Other - undesirable aliens".

You can tell that the author is having fun playing out this scenario. "African man felt sure of himself early on. He saw himself as a superior being on this earth, without equal....The others - natives, barbarians, primitives, pagans (almost always white) - are reduced to the rank of pariahs. The universe seems to have been created only to raise him up, to celebrate him"

These what-if scenarios help us understand Africa's current situation - how it is presented to the rest of the world, the language that is used to pack the complicated messages into sound bites -  the inversion of this world helps us see the absurdity of some of the metaphors.

The book is also the story of Maya, the abandoned French girl who is adopted by her African "Doctor Papa" and now lives a life of privilege in Africa instead of being condemned to the squalor of France. Maya although sheltered still faces the racial slur on account of her skin color - "Milk-face", "curd-face".  She undertakes a journey to France to face her birth mother and despite being surrounded by people who look like her, she realizes that she is more African than she imagined herself to be.

Until this point all I have done is capture the essence of the book, now for  my opinions. This was a book that I was so sure that I would love, but I actually had a hard time finishing it. While i enjoyed the reverse scenario for the first few chapters letting my mind explore the "what if", I also ended up asking "so what". I did like the tongue in cheek references, and the play on brands like Nescafe, Ikea and Starbucks etc, but again "so what". If this had been just an essay or a series of essays it would've worked much better, but this was supposed to be a novel and i felt there was no plot here. Even the adventure of Maya in France held all the promise of the Odyssey, but was more like, pardon me for saying this..Alice in wonderland sans the jabberwocky (which is included in the movie versions to make Alice's travel more interesting) and all the action that comes with it - a hodge podge of interesting incidents but not a strong plot. As a novel it was a letdown but as an interesting satirical essay...sure!

OBOC - Cyprus

Between Greece and Turkey I thought I will have Cyprus covered, but chanced on this book at the library and decided to "recognize" Cyprus as a sovereign nation that it is for OBOC :) Lawrence Durrell's travel narrative "Bitter Lemons" is a detailed account of his time spent in Cyprus between 1953 and 1956.

What starts off as a comical narrative documenting Durrell's experiences trying to settle down in Cyprus, finding a quite place and start writing, soon becomes serious as political tensions slowly escalate culminating in violence and forcing Durrell to leave Cyprus.

This is the time in history when the country went through "Enosis" (i.e joining Greece) and he resistance group EOKA was formed. When Durrell accepted a job as Press Advisor he witnessed how unprepared the colonial government was to deal with the changes. Violence is met with violence and there are some lessons here that apply for those governments that are trying to win hearts and minds on the one hand and dealing with "terrorists" or "resistance movements" on the other.

Unfortunately for Durrell things get to a point where he is forced to leave the island without even saying goodbye to his friends. The feelings that Cypriots have for the British is mixed and is best summarized by the taxi driver who drives Durrell to the airport. "Dighenis though he fights the British, really loves them. But he will have to go on killing them -- with regret, even with affection"


Although the first half of the book deals with the relationship between the Turkish minority and the Greek majority, there is not much discussion about the Turks and their feelings about enosis. Of course as we look back we now know that Enosis was abandoned and a complicated power sharing arrangement was worked out as Cyprus became an independent nation. Durrell of course had to leave much before that.

Despite the historical background and the humor, this book did not appeal to me as much as I hoped it would. So it was a difficult read for me and I am glad to be finally done with it and move to the other D's.

OBOC - Denmark (and Greenland?)

While Isak Dinesen was the obvious choice for Denmark, I didn't want to read about Kenya for Denmark (especially given that i am not a big fan of the short story format). So I went with Peter Hoeg and his most famous novel "Smilla's Sense of Snow".

Little did I know that I would hit two countries with one book, and honestly I learned more about Greenland than about Denmark through this one. But hey, what else can one expect when the heroine of the novel is a Greenlander with a great sense for snow (she prefers the solid state to the liquid one clearly). Smilla is a cross between Houdini (she can walk on water and go through locked doors) and a nerdy Clint Eastwood (in every single brooding portrayal). In fact if this book had a hero instead of a heroine I am sure it would've been made into a Clint Eastwood movie along the lines of Gran Torino.

The daughter of an Eskimo woman and a Danish doctor, Smilla migrates to Denmark to live in the "White Palace" - a piece of land donated by the Housing Authority and the home of many migrants. She liked to be left to herself and hated any form of control ("detest passport and birth certificates, government control and demands"). Her only companions were books on Euclidean geometry and her neighbor the 6 year old Isaiah a fellow Greenlander like her.

When Isaiah meets with his mysterious death falling from the snow covered roof of the white palace, Smilla refuses to believe that it was an accident. The snow had its own way of revealing its mysteries to Smilla that she doesn't rest until she unravels what happened to Isaiah on the snow covered roof. The mystery leads us to Isaiah's father who died on the job, the corporation he worked for, the mysterious people who run the corporation, the many voyages between Greenland and Copenhagen financed by the company to smuggle into Denmark something bigger than drugs, something alive from Gela Alta.

Peter Hoeg keeps the pace gripping most of the time (although you find it pretty easy to unravel what's at the end), and along the way educates the reader on many scientific topics from glacial snow to astronomy to mathematics and tropical parasites. But what made the book very interesting to me, is the character development of Smilla - her voice, her sarcasm, her passion for the obscure. In any piece of writing I find analogies very fascinating and this book was so full of them. ("The number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers. The ones that are whole and positive. Like the numbers of a small child. But human consciousness expands. The child discovers longing. Do you know the mathematical expression for longing? The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you're missing something"). It is remarkable that Peter Hoeg pulled off a complicated female voice with such ease.

The other theme was colonization by Denmark of Greenland and the effect it has on the Inuits.Morality has also been explored quite a bit - what is the moral code of Scientists and Science? role of religion etc.

Overall I liked the book, but i found it rambling in certain sections and Hoeg could've used a good editor. So it doesn't rank too high on my list of suspense novels. But I loved Smilla - just like the glaciers that she is so fond of, on the surface she is cold, but with depth you find she is actually warmer than you expected.

OBOC - Czech Republic

How can you have a reading project and not include Kafka? Although I was 100% positive that I wouldn’t be able to get any Czech specific insight by reading “Metamorphosis”, I wanted to use OBOC to finally force myself to pick up Kafka.  He is one of the writers of whom I’ve read a bit more than I’ve read anything by him, and I knew I couldn’t stay like that forever.

So with trepidation I picked up Metamorphosis as I was not sure if I wanted to enter the Kafkaseque world, but here I am completely transformed on reading this novella which I would recommend to anyone who has been postponing reading Kafka.

Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, hardworker, the dutiful son and loving brother, wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a vermin (or a cockroach or an insect, depending on how you want to interpret it). Instead of evoking sympathy from his family, he only evokes horror and disgust except from his loving sister Grete who takes care of him. Relegated to one room, he lives like a prisoner to keep himself away from visitors, eating filth by choice, crawling on his fours and occasionaly looking out of the window. Without his income to provide for them, the rest of the family starts to pick up the slack and they even take on lodgers to make up for the shortfall. Drawn to his sister’s music on the violin, he crawls out of his room causing panic among the lodgers who promptly vacate his house. Pelted with apples by his father, and hated by his own sister for not being sensitive to their feelings, he goes back to his room collapses and eventually dies due to starvation and from the infection from the apple stuck to his back. While Gregor is relieved of his painful existence, the rest of the family are relieved from the burden of having to deal with him. The family quickly moves from this painful state, into a new home, with new hopes for Grete.

This short novella has spawned countless interpretations and inspirations that it is one of the favorite books of anyone who is someone in literature today from Marquez to Rushdie. Personally, I was amazed by how a completely absurd scenario held me in total captivity and I was entwined in the long sentences which are supposed to be signatures of the Kafkan style. Despite the gloom and doom there was an undercurrent of dark humor which heightened the intensity of the story.  

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous insect” – an opening sentence that seems to have transformed students of literature into entomologists. The amount of passionate discussion around the word insect (was it a beetle, a dung beetle, a cockroach, does it have wings, how big was it, was it a vermin) puts E.O.Wilson and his love for ants to shame!

Milan Kundera was going to be my pick for Czech, but I had cheated as I already saw the movie “The unbearable lightness of being”, so I decided to go straight to the master himself and now having undergone the metamorphosis personally, I can’t wait to read more.

OBOC - Croatia

If you haven’t noticed Anti-Aging is big business worth >$20B. From people trying to sell you de-wrinkling creams, spa treatments, hair coloring, botox injections – they’ve found a way to make you feel so terrible about your age, that I wonder if any woman over 30 even celebrates her birthday anymore. “Aging gracefully” is a phrase that I no longer understand if the only representative for that category is Sigourney Weaver who at 60+ still looks like she can take on a few aliens single handed, or Betty White who is ageless anyway. Even in books we have wizards like Gandolf who is the epitome of coolness, and there is no such equivalent for witches! Name one cool witch and I realize that Christine O’Donnell doesn’t help my argument one bit.

Why all these morbid thoughts on aging? It hasn’t got anything to do with my 5yr old constantly reminding me my age and no it is not because i am going through some mid life crisis thanks to the first sliver of silver which has sneaked its way into an otherwise dark cloud - ironic isn’t it - this is one silver lining no one seems to want.

But every time I visit family back home I am confronted with these images of my grandmom who at 92, seems to be shrinking right in front of my eyes that I wonder if one day she will simply vanish into thin air. She has always been grey haired, steel teethed in my memory but of late gravity seems to have a profound effect on her as her back is almost bent to a U, and I can’t really call the movement of her putting one leg in front of the other “walking”. With a fig leaf of a skin covering her otherwise all-bone body I was just astounded to see that she still prefers to wrap herself in the whole 9 yards, but that’s what she is made of. Despite everything else failing, her steely resolve, empathy and the sharpness of her brain have not abandoned her. A tough old bird, that’s what she is!

Now what has all this to do with Croatia - everything as you will see. I read Dubravka Ugresic’s beautiful book on aging in the modern day titled “Baba Yaga Laid an Egg” In case you have no clue who Baba Yaga is – she is the legendary witch famous in all Slavic cultures, who lives in a chicken leg house, kidnaps children, is completely disproportionate, feared by everyone, grey haired, steel teethed, moustached, shaggy legged old woman who lives alone and flies around on a mortar. Actually Baba Yaga has become a metaphor for any old woman as it seems like the only qualification to join the coven is age But a goddess or a demon, grotesque or grandeur depends on who is telling the story.

Ugresic’s warns you at the beginning, “all at once you begin to spot them.. and you feel a pang of sympathy for them...But now is the time to dig in your heels and resist or you will slide into a world that you had no intention of entering, at least not yet.. because your time has not yet come!” These words resonated so much with me. I remember my ever-curious little one, hiding behind me, sneaking a peak at her great grandmoms whispering in my ears “When will you turn into one of them?”. Don’t worry, my time has not yet come.

The story is told in 3 parts and is the story of 4 old women in today’s Eastern Europe. The first part deals with Ugresic’s  difficult relationship with her aging mother who has remained stationary while the world is speeding past her. The relationship is further complicated by the appearance of folklorist Aba who hits it off with her mother. Anyone who has a long distance relationship with their mom will find this part speaking to them personally.  The second part is about 3 women Beba, Kukla and Pupa who visit a health resort in Czech to rejuvenate themselves and find that their lives are changed forever as death and their past follows them. The third part is a treatise on the folkore surrounding Baba Yaga written by none other than the anagrammatic Aba Bagay, the folklorist introduced in Part 1. The third part is especially good for people like me who need a Baba Yaga 101. Once you read that, you see the references to the folklore hidden in the first two parts.

Now if all this appears scary to you and makes you want to turn to the first treatment that promises eternal youth, remember there are certain powers that come with being a Baba Yaga - the power to transform, to metamorphosize, and the power to fly! At the heart of it, the book is about the journey undertaken by women, who often times outlive their spouses and therefore are condemned to a life of loneliness especially as they approach the end of their destinations. A society that views them through a patriarchal lens demonizes them, but losing teeth doesn’t make them toothless, being frail doesn’t make them weak and despite the concerted effort to ostracize them and take away all their powers (except the one to scare little children), they are always ready to wield the sword that they have under their heads and take on anything that comes their way. That is how they’ve survived through their lifetime and through lifetimes to come.

As I read the book I paid a silent tribute to all the Baba Yagas in my life, some thankfully still around and some who have flown away on their mortars. Each of them in their own way is/was ready to wield her sword any time to guard the precious even without any of the mythical powers. And when my time finally comes, I hope to be ready and resourceful to brandish my sword and swashbuckle my way through whatever life throws at me.

OBOC - Cuba

The comparison between Isabel Allende’s House of Spirits and Daina Chaviano’s The Island of Eternal Love is valid on some levels. Both writers left their country of birth amidst a social revolution (the former by the capitalists, the latter by the socialists though) and migrated to America forever longing for the country they left behind at the same time hating it for it had turned into. Similar to Allende’s novel  Chaviano’s work also encompasses multiple generations, strong women characters, invokes magical realism, spirits, and is set in a historical context. But the comparison ends there, at least according to me.

I just couldn’t connect to this novel as I did to the House of Spirits. Chaviano’s work appears to be a bit incoherent and frankly did not have the power of Isabel Allende’s words. But that doesn’t mean it is not a book to be picked up. I think it has a lot of promise and was very interesting in parts.

One of the things I learned from the book is the multi-cultural/ethnic face of Cuba – an amalgam of Chinese, Black and Spanish cultures. The book also portrays the Cubans love for music beautifully. The revolution and the counter revolution are discussed and the author doesn’t mince words about how she feels about the revolution and what it has done to her beloved country. 

As for the story, it is told in two time lines – one in the present day and one that starts a century ago and the two stories meet at the end of the book. The current day story is about Cecilia who is a Miami reporter investigating the appearance of phantom houses on certain dates associated with the fate of Cuba, seen only by those who are open to supernatural experiences. Cecilia is lonely, separated from her family and her country of birth and is going through a bout of depression in trying to decipher her place in Miami.

Cecilia meets a fellow Cuban, an old lady, Amalia, in a bar who narrates her life story which has its roots in China, Spain and Africa – all coming together in Cuba. Through her story we get a glimpse of Cuban political, cultural, ethnic history not to mention the religious/occult/fantastical traditions among the different communities. The Chinese family in the book uses dreams to play the lottery, the Black family sees ghosts and the daughter is possessed by a demon and the Spanish family where all the women upon hitting puberty have to deal with Martinico the imp

At first the story of Cecilia’s investigation seemed interesting but after a point it failed to hold my attention. The other story narrated by Amalia on the other hand was much more intriguing and almost made me skip alternate chapters to get to it! Overall if I had a rating system I would give this book 3 stars out of 5. Not as gripping as I hoped it would be.

OBOC - Cote d'Ivorie (Ivory Coast)

White woman lives for a year in a remote village in Africa and writes a book about that experience - what can one expect? Romanticizing? Condescending? Patronizing? Prying? How about sensitivity for a change? That's exactly what stood out in Carol Spindel's "In the shadow of the sacred grove" a book based on her experiences in a West African village in the Ivory Coast which she calls Kalikaha to preserve the anonymity.

Spindel, an artist, accompanies her then boyfriend Tom who was performing field work on Agriculture, to Ivory Coast not knowing what she was going to do. She doesn't attempt to gloss over any of the difficulties she faced - the complete lack of privacy, the heat and dust, bats in the bedroom, no running water. But what was most frustrating for her was the inability to communicate directly with the villagers who spoke either Dyula or Senufo and having to rely on their translator and assistant Yardjuma.

Her curious yet patient temperament and excellent listening and language (she learns some Dyula) skills come to her aide as she befriends the women of the village (especially the potters) slowly and is therefore able to provide an insider view of not just this village but about Africa as a whole.

There are some very vivid and poetic descriptions of the pottery, the masks, the drums, the music, the festivals and the funerals, but those are not the reasons why her writing stands out. She is exceptional when she writes with tremendous understanding and respect about the differences between the Africa of the '80s and the Western World.

Whether it is wealth or technology there is a wide gap between the villagers and Tom and Carol despite the fact that the two of them were "poor" researchers on a shoe string budget. Technology to a villager meant knowing how to extract oil from seeds, make bricks and utensils with their own hands, pick the right grasses for making the roof and to survive in that environment every villager needed to possess an intimate knowledge of everything around them. In observing the difference Carol remarks "They credited us with the same intimate knowledge of our own possessions, but I could not possibly explain to them how our shortwave radio worked or what ingredients were used in making plastic"

The way the women made pottery broke every rule that was taught in the West in a modern art class but at the same time she is poignantly reminded that simple medicines like antacids, a piece of floss string and basic hygiene cured illnesses and saved lives when folk remedies could not.

Some of the most sensitive portrayal was about the role of women in this society. Despite being an independent, strong willed woman from the West, Carol does not dismiss the women of the village for being subservient to the men. She clearly sees their courage and wisdom and is almost envious of the strong bonds among the women. While the West has a negative view on aging, she is touched by the immense respect commanded by the older women who guide the younger ones.

Where she shows remarkable restraint is when she comes face to face with practices like polygamy, female circumcision - very hard for any westerner to understand. She neither condemns nor condones these practices but manages to objectively capture them in her book. Another instance of this restraint is how she is not quick to pass judgment on all Africans based on her singular bad experience with Yardjuma.

And then who can forgot the "blessings" or greetings that people called out to each other a thousand times a day. In a world where a quick nod, a weak smile, a simple Hello have become accepted forms of greetings who has the time for long contextually relevant phrases like "Allah ka nagoya kay" (May God make it better).But these are more than just greetings in Kalikaha, they are fervent appeals to a god who has to come to their assistance right now - not sometime in the future and not in the abstract. Life is rough and any assistance from any superior power is needed for hope to spring amidst some desperate situations. The effect these blessings have on Carol is obvious when she finally has the courage to call them what they really were - "prayers".

One of my main objectives for OBOC was not to form an opinion of any culture based on a single story i have heard. Carol Spindle's book captures all the different stories in a single Ivory Coast village in such a sensitive way that it is truly a great book for this project!

OBOC - Congo (Republic)

“Broken Glass” was unlike anyother novel that I read from Africa as part of OBOC. It had to be one of the lightest reads with the exception of Mongo Beti’s Mission Accomplished. Still I had a bit of difficulty plodding through the novel and I will explain why in a bit, but I should say it was only when I completed it and spent some time thinking about it I started to see the merits of the novel.

It is obvious that Alain Mabanckou is in love with words and literature so much so that he didn’t want punctuations to distract us from the letters. Sentences flowed in one continuous stream with no periods or any other marks besides commas, reminding me of Cormac McCarthy’s style of writing (although Alain uses quotation marks). Along the way Alain also pays tribute to many of the leading writers across the globe from Borges to Tagore and to some of the best loved comic characters like Asterix to Tintin and Snowy. The book is also like a puzzle or a treasure hunt with hidden references to many other works some of which were lost on me (unfamiliarity with French literature and History).  It is certainly a fresh, young voice in African Literature.

The story in a nutshell is about Broken Glass - a has-been teacher, who aspired to be a literary figure when young. He is now a 64 year old alcoholic, suspended from his job for inappropriate behavior, abandoned by his dad when young, orphaned by his mom who drowned herself, and left to his own by his wife Angelica (aka Diabolica). His only solace is the bar Credit Gone West which has managed to stand despite being attacked by local thugs and corrupt officials with “iron bars from Zanzibar, clubs and cudgels from Medieval Christendom, poisoned spears from the time of Chaka Zulu, sickles and hammers from the Communist Block, Molotov Cocktails from May’68, machetes left over from the killing spree in Rwanda”. (One of my favorite sentences in the book BTW, one sentence that captures the history of Africa).

The bar owner Stubborn Snail, enlists Broken Glass to chronicle the history of the bar and its patrons a motley crew of desperate souls. In a country of oral tradition, Stubborn Snail doesn’t want Credit Gone West erased from the memory of future generations. So he trusts only the written word to preserve the memory (“didn’t want Credit Gone West just to vanish one day, and added that people in this country have no sense of the importance of memory, that the days when grandmothers reminisced from their deathbeds was gone now, this is the age of the written word, that’s all that’s left”)

Through the potpourri of patrons we get a glimpse of life at the very bottom rung of the social ladder in Trois Cents. Whether it is the “Pampers Guy” who was violated in prison or the “Printer” whose life in Paris was shattered by the appearance of his illegitimate son, or Mouyeke a con artist cum sorcerer, or Robinette the prostitute who can “outpiss” any drunk, you will realize these are not characters that are going to create legendary fiction with larger than life heroes. Some of these stories were outright gawdy, gross and gruesome making it a difficult read for me especially with all the discussion on scat. But that precisely is the point of Alain, he is giving voice to the voiceless and he manages to do it through the ramblings of one of them.

I can’t say I enjoyed the book completely, but I can certainly see myself re-reading certain sections just for the delight offered by Mabanckou’s words and to try and solve some of the literary puzzles. I guess like the title “Broken Glass” the image offered by the book is in bits and pieces which challenges the reader to put together the pieces by themselves.

OBOC - Congo (DRC)

This is going to be a long review. After all the book was 540 pages, and the political history of the Congo goes back many centuries. In fact what is amazing is how Barbara Kingsolver did what she did in a mere 540 pages!

Until a year ago I could barely get the two Congos correct and had to constantly refer to them by their Colonizers - Belgian Congo for the DRC and the French Congo for the Republic, and unfortunately I know i am not alone. And if you are into literature you know that in your subconscious "Darkness" and "Congo" went together thanks to Joseph Conrad. Then about a year back, my little one and I were boxing and shipping books to the DRC as part of the Congo Books Project initiated by Keith Harmon Snow, and as she looked up the DRC on a map, I started to read a bit more about its history.  One thing led to the other and I ended up supporting Friends of the Congo and I saw the Poisonwood Bible as one of their recommended reading.

A Baptist Missionary Nathan Price uproots his family which comprises of his wife (Orleanna) and 4 daughters (Rachel, the twins Leah and Adah and Ruth May) from Georgia and drops them in the Congo in 1960. "Sashaying into the jungle aiming to change it all over to the Christian style" the family finds that the Jungle has its own way of "changing you right back". How do the 2 civilizations clash and change each other is the crux of the story told by the women over a period of 30 years as each find their own paths to the future. During these 30 years the political turmoil faced by the Congo as it changes hands from Belgium to Patrice Lumumba to Mobuto with the Western powers behind the curtain as puppet masters forms the backdrop of the novel.

At the risk of sounding like a book report, I have to write this review in blocks of themes that fell out for me.

1) Political Allegory: Going in uninvited, trying to save the Native by offering salvation without making the smallest attempt to understand them, Nathan Price is the embodiment of all the meddling done by the Western poltical powers in Africa. "Tata Jesus is Bangala" he exclaims without bothering to learn the right enunciation that Jesus became the poisonwood who promised great itches instead of being the "most precious" who could deliver salvation! His marriage to Orleanna started as a passionate affair but ended up with him exerting complete domination over her until she after enduring great tragedy decided to not let him conquer her anymore! Now that is a great allegorical reference to the Western powers' passion for Africa and how Africa responds back. Rachel Price observes if it (conquering and controlling Africa) was as easy as they thought it would be then wouldn't Africa look just like America with more palm trees?

2) The plight of Africa: Kingsolver's empathy lies firmly with Africa and she delivers an astounding lesson for the Western world which is extremely relevant till date.The West is rightly accused of walking out of Africa as a "husband quits his wife leaving her with her naked body curled around the emptied-out mine of her womb". Now wasn't that exactly how Belgium quit Congo in the the 1960 after decades of exploiting the country.   The whole continent has endured according the Adah a "bizzare combination of foreign thievery and foreign good will" and the world today deals with the "Africa problem" by hollow promises of foreign aid. From diamonds to coltan our blessings are becoming the Congo's curse. What is our role? Are we "co-conspirators" without our own knowledge? These are some hard hitting questions that the book raised and made me think hard.

3) Gardening and the Land: The land figures prominently in the book, just like i guess it does in the Bible. Nathan Price carries seeds from his hometown and goes about clearing the land for a kitchen garden completely ignoring the demands of the local ecosystem and refusing to heed to local wisdom. But Nature ultimately triumphs over everything and in the Congo time and again proves it cannot be conquered or controlled. Be it through droughts, downpours or armies of ants it has its way of winning against all odds. This again seemed like a warning by Kingsolver to modern agro-science and to the powers that be that try to impose temperate agricultural practices onto tropical lands.

4) The effect of Africa: When tragedy strikes the Price family, Orleanna leads her remaining children out of the Congo by simply standing up and walking in silence through the rain, mud and dirt. But over the years the family discovers that they've got their "heart buried six feet in African dirt" and each deals with this in their own way. Orleanna turns to the land, while her daughters have a "lock, stock and barrel" approach. Rachel the vain locks herself into an equatorial paradise, Adah takes stock of everything as she researches infectious diseases, and Leah barrels her way into setting things right finding that under the equatorial sun and with time her whiteness can slowly but surely be erased.  In the macroscopic world the west discovers that by "saving Africa's babies and extracting its mineral soul" it has shown the path to its own door for infectious diseases.

These are not the only themes in the book - gender inequality, religious themes ("there are christians and there are christians"), the political systems and the economic systems clashing - each is present and can be elaborated. Then there is the strain of guilt and self doubt that runs through the book - guilt that is propagated through religion, war and familial ties to the guilt of abandonment .

If all this appears excessively bleak, Kingsolver through the words of the "eyes in the trees" urges us to forgive ourselves and "slide the weight from your shoulders and move forwards. ...Move on. Walk forward into the light" are the last words of wisdom the novel has to offer. As I put it down I realized that this was just one of those novels that despite its heart wrenching themes left me sadder when it ended.

What i haven't mentioned are the technical merits of the book - writing in 5 different voices (interesting to note that the patriarch who dominated the lives of everyone is rendered voiceless), character development etc as I am not qualified to do that :)

I am now looking forward to the BBC World Book Club discussion with Kingsolver about this book in October.

OBOC - Colombia

I’ve heard about the comparisons between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Borges, but having previously failed at Borges for Argentina, I was in two minds about picking up “100 years of solitude” lest it met with the same fate at my hands. Still I wanted to give it a shot. At the outset I have to say, I am not familiar with the history of Colombia (other than what I read as part of this effort), neither am I a student of literature. So if you are looking for an insightful review that connects the history of Colombia (specifically Aracataca) to that of Macondo and draws out the similarities and differences between the 2 legendary writers, please keep looking. If you are just curious to know what I thought of the book, read on.

“100 years” traces the fortunes and misfortunes of 7 generations of the Buendia family in Macondo starting from the patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula who founded the city. Macondo is a city of dreams or a city of mirrors/mirages depending on how you see it. Jose Arcadio finds it believing it to be a city of mirrors but it ends up being a city of mirages as people remain trapped in the city until its eventual destruction. Isn’t that a straightforward plot? Not quite.

One of the central characters in the story is the wandering gypsy Melquiades who brings the newest inventions to Macondo and serves as the only connection to the outside world for Macondo. Towards the end of his life Melquidaes to avoid solitary death comes back to the Buendia household spending his remaning years writing mysterious parchments. Every male of the Buendia household attempts to decipher the parchments written in a cyclical cipher and just like them , we the readers are trying to decipher the code which is hidden in the “100 years”.

What is real and what is myth, what is history and what is prophecy? Lines blur and although time moves in a linear direction events repeat themselves through the 7 generations showing the cyclical nature of time. Every male is named Arcadio or Aureliano in keeping with the repetition. What is common among the people of Macondo is their tendency to believe in the fantastic and forget the facts, and a resignation to fate. Is Garcia implying that the destruction of Macondo is due to the residents’ attitude and is that a commentary on rural Colombia at that time? I don’t know. Again I believe Garcia is playing a trick on us like Melquiades and I will leave it to students of literature and experts to answer these questions.
The 2 words you hear the most associated with this book are “Magical Realism” - women ascending into heaven along with their laundry, raining for 4 years without even a brief respite, yellow butterflies following people in love everywhere, magic carpets, a plague of insomnia as a result of modernization that is so pronounced that even things like milk and cows had to be labelled – how do you explain all this? Poetic justice, clever allegorical references – whatever it may be, it was captivating to read and then there were the historical references which were woven into the magical narrative – the wars between the Conservatives and the Liberals, the atrocities of the Banana Company (United Fruit?).


In a story that spans generations where the family home is always full with multi-generational relatives, what struck me is the solitude that the characters experience even when living with one’s own flesh and blood. There is strikingly complete lack of love between people except in a couple of relationships. And anyone who is unlucky to fall in love with a member of this highly dysfunctional family pays a very high price sometimes with their own lives. This selfish, egocentric streak in the family finally results in complete destruction of their ancestral home and their family line and the town they founded. Garcia ends the novel by saying that races condemned to 100 years of solitude will not get a second opportunity on earth.

The novel and particularly the ending left me disturbed. Is Garcia condemning the nation of Colombia to a complete solitude? What was he trying to say? So I did some research and chanced on his Noble lecture for this book, where he describes the utopia he is longing for. I leave you with his own words....

“On a day like today, my master William Faulkner said, "I decline to accept the end of man". I would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possibility. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”

Attack of the Nerdy Princess

“A lot of mothers will do anything for their children except let them be themselves”. This is one of my favorite quotes attributed to an artist I admire very much and I’ve been proudly flaunting this on my signature. At that time I had no idea that this will come to bite me. Let me explain.

If you know anything about me, you know that I am not hesitant to use the F word to describe myself – yes I am a proud Feminist and of the old-school variety, so much so that my daughter in 5 years of her life has never seen even a lipstick in the house. When someone gave her a lipstick “piggy bank” she wondered why the “rocket” was an odd shape! Mom was always someone in trousers with only two sets of earrings and two sets of shoes and black was mom’s favorite color. Other women in Indian dresses and accessories to match were a novelty to be stared at and admired, but they lived in a parallel universe and would occasionally pop in to our lives never lingering long enough to cause any permanent damage.

But things have changed in the past few months. I find myself now in a war and here I am a mid-30 year old battle worn Amazonian warrior taking on 5 and 6 year old girls in pink dresses for the control of the most prized possession – my daughter’s heart and mind! Thanks to these little mercenaries with killer smiles, she has discovered the color pink and princesses and all the stereotypes that go with it.

I look back on the time when she was condemned to a life without friends. “How big is your dad? He is as big as Vy Canis Major”, not the answer that would make you popular in Kindergarten – Oh what happy times! Makes me almost forget the gnawing motherly guilt that made me decide that she needs a conversational currency to exchange with other kids her age. And so I opened a window of concession and the first princess storybook came into our home. I should have known that royalty in any form is dangerous. However big their kingdom, they are always on the look out for newer pastures, and like Leopold taking over the Congo, Snow white and Cinderella silently plotted against me to take over the greenest of minds which until then was my exclusive territory!

“Do you know Sleeping Beauty lives in a castle in Disney Land”? My clever retort -  “Which part of the word Fantasyland didn’t you understand?”

“Do you know that girls like pink and purple and boys like blue?” Solution: “Today daddy will go to work in pink” – he, after all is collateral damage in the ongoing war!

“Why are there no pink shoes in REI? Don’t princesses go hiking?”

“Why don’t you like pink? I don’t think black is a color in the first place”

 “Why do you ask so many questions?” I answered her question with a question to which she retorted “Who was that great teacher that you said told everyone to ask questions?” I shut up. Now I know why they gave him Hemlock! Here I was being accused of “hating” pink and therefore by extension all girls! Sonia Sotomayor had an easier time convincing Republicans that she was not a reverse racist. 

I knew i had to dig deeper into myself to be able to call truce, and like Betteredge in “The Moonstone” who believed answers to all life’s questions can be found in Robinson Crusoe, I turned to my trusted confidant “To Kill A Mockingbird”. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” the wise man said. I realized that just because I viewed the pinkilicious form of girlhood as a “starched wall of pink penitentiary” she doesn’t have to.

So I’ve decided to embrace this princess thing and I am learning to walk around in her shoes (or “glass slippers” I should say) as Atticus advised me. In this process, I realized that being a princess didn’t take away any of the other things that I feared she would lose, which were so unique to her - her love for hiking, gardening, weeding, star gazing, reading, making up silly poems. Show me a princess who can belch and burp like her anytime, at will and I will start wearing makeup and high heeled shoes! And by being her pretend friends, I realized that Cinderella and Snowwhite have been learning a thing or two about planets and bugs and rocks which I am positive neither their Fairy Godmothers nor their Prince charming could have taught them!

OBOC - China

Picking a book from China had to be one of the most difficult things I had to do as part of OBOC. While some countries posed a great challenge because of the very few books available in English, China posed a challenge for the opposite reason – too many books covering the gamut of socio-political history. I picked Eileen Chang’s “Rice Sprout Song” for a few reasons.

Firstly it was about a period that I wanted to understand more – early ‘50s when Maoist land reform was promising a better life to peasants. Secondly the setting was rural China about which I know very little. Thirdly, it is no secret I have a preference for female writers , too much history in the world was written by men so it is imperative to hear the other gender’s voice even if it is only in novels – more about that later. Last but not the least, the book was written in English by Chang and was not a translation. Given that I can’t read Chinese, at least I know that this book is an accurate reflection of Chang’s thoughts and not an interpretation by someone else.

Rice Sprout Song is a portrait of rural China following the land reform movement which distributed land from landowners to peasants. While the redistribution brought great hope to the peasants, did it really bring about any real change in their situation? The answer is a resounding No. Watery gruel cannot quell the hunger in their bellies but fear can quell any rebellion - well almost.

The book starts off with a wedding - Gold Flower's and even in such a gathering the poverty is not lost as Big Uncle complains about the inferior food on his plate. Gold Flower's brother Gold Root returns to his village with his daughter Beckon awaiting his wife Moon Scent's return. Moon Scent works as a maid in Shanghai to supplement their meager income but is all set to come back to the country, now that they own a piece of land. Although very happy to be reunited with her husband, she is faced with the grim reality that the land reform has not really improved their situation and despairs to see the poverty around her.

If poverty is one theme, the second equally important one is the loss of freedom and complete subjugation by the party. Every word is uttered carefully even in the most private confines of one's own home. Don't dwell in the past or romanticize the old days, show just the right amount of enthusiasm to the Party and keep the rhetoric to the right, believable level - although not spelled out, these unwritten rules are obvious to everyone. To top it off there is the writer Comrade Ku who has come to the village to write a script around the life of peasants. Constantly having to prove his commitment to the Party and the cause, he suffers from a writer's block on one hand and experiences hunger for the first time. Loss of freedom of speech and curtailing creative freedom which were beautifully brought out by Chang, sadly is not restricted to Communist nations. We all know the subjugation of dissent that has happened in even most progressive democracies especially during war.

The presence of the Party is felt all the time throughout the book, but to Chang's credit, she has managed to evoke some sympathy even for Comrade Wong who is the local representative of the Party in the village. Lonely and feared by everyone, he has nothing or no one to lean on except the Party.

When Comrade Wong demands the unthinkable, a pig and 40 rice cakes from each empty-bellied family as a tribute to show support to the Army families, we see Gold Root transforming from the Model Worker that he was into a Reactionary protesting against the cruel demands made by the tyrannical Wong. The Rice Sprout song that was to be sung during the New Year's festivities becomes Gold Root's swan song . He had managed to remain a silent witness to the poverty and tyranny until it became too much to bear.

A tragic novel with a great insight into rural China about which we hear very little even today. Empty-bellied peasants are not new to India where farmer suicides make headlines, but what about the peasants of China? Does the economic boom benefit them or are they still silently awaiting trickle-down benefits? Something tells me this novel is sadly relevant even today and it reminded me that poverty is not just about hunger, it is about the feeling of despair that comes from no hope, no dignity and no recourse.

OBOC - Chile

A woman writer from Latin America with the last name of Allende, Isabel Allende was the natural pick for Chile for the obvious reasons.  So it was "The house of the spirits" for me for OBOC - Chile

What struck me about the book was that it refused to get boxed into any category - magical-realism (isn't that an oxymoron!), political novel, feminist literature, historic fiction - it had a bit of everything. Spanning three generations of women - Clara, Blanca and Alba, the wife, daughter and granddaughter respectively of the patriarch Esteban Trueba, "The house of the spirits", chronicles the upheavals in the lives of the women due to geological (earthquakes!), socio-political (Marxism, Dictatorship, Coups!) and inter-personal (the love of their lives - Esteban, Pedro Garcia and Miguel) transformations.

Isabel Allende is the niece of Salvador Allende the President of Chile at the time of the infamous 1973 coup which propelled the dictator Pinochet into office.  When Marxists and Conservatives clash, the only winners were the Generals. Without naming names (The President is just  The President - Allende, the Poet is just the Poet - Pablo Neruda?) , Isabel has beautifully woven this piece of Chile's tumultous history into the story and we get a glimpse of what Chileans went through during those years.

There is no such thing as a middle ground in the entire novel, be it in the events or the characters - maybe that is the reality that Chile faced through its history. Esteban has to be one of the most violent patriarch that i've ever encountered in a novel - his tantrums and dominance were always extreme and so were his passions. Similarly every character you encounter were extreme in their own ways - Clara's complete neglect for anything mundane, Blanca's love for Pedro, Ferula's love for Clara, Pedro and Miguel's commitment to Marxism, Jamie's concern for others, Nicholas' indulgences and so on. Even the events were catastrophic - from the macroscopic ones like the earthquake that rocked Chile, the dictatorship that came into power,  to the microscopic ones - Barrabas' death, Clara's silence, etc. That's what made the novel so gripping and only when I put it down did i realize that there was no middle ground anywhere.

The other major theme is conflict - landlord Vs tenant, Marxist Vs Conservatives, Nature Vs Man, the Patriarch Esteban Vs the Matriarch Clara, the young Vs the Old. All these conflicts ended in a lose-lose situation as the lack of harmony was capitalized the Military Dictatorship.

The third theme I saw in the novel is cyclical interconnectedness of events and characters. Esteban starts off the whole story with his brutal rapes, only to see his dearest granddaughter Alba being raped by a product of his own crime. Clara is the only constant thread that runs through everyone's life and even after her death, Clara is the one that evokes Alba's spirit to live and tell the story which Clara had painstakingly recorded through her notes.

The House of Spirits is a great piece of literature, at times humorous, fantastic, magical, gruesome, it just stirs so many emotions in the reader that it was so hard to put down. Now that I am reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for Colombia, I am eager to see why the two books are so often compared.

OBOC - Canada

Maragaret Atwood has long been on my reading list but until now I had postponed reading her. She was the obvious choice for me for Canada and I had a difficult time deciding which of her books to read. I decided on "The Blind Assassin" not because of the Booker Prize, but because descriptions of the novel convinced me that I would also get a good picture of Canada, which after all is one of the main objectives of OBOC.

I heard you either love or hate her writings. I am now certainly in the former camp. I loved the book, for the plot, for the style (she pulled off 4 stories in one novel all intertwined with each other), the lyrical prose, the characters and for the historic setting which painted a picture of Canada through the war years.

If you want the plot -Iris Chase the protagonist is now an old woman in her eighties reliving the events of her childhood, her unhappy marriage to Richard Griffien, the death of her sister Laura following the Second World War and how her life takes shape after these tragic events. Iris is recounting these incidents in the hope that her estranged granddaughter Sabrina would just listen to her story(not seeking her forgiveness or love - we are told). The story is as much Laura's as it is Iris' as their lives are intertwined. 'The Blind Assassin" is recognized as Laura's posthumous work and this novel contains another novel in which the lead character (a hunted communist - assumed to be Alex Thomas a childhood friend of both the sisters) is narrating a science fiction story to his lover (assumed to be Laura) during their clandestine meetings.

The main story is a revelation and as it progresses all our questions are answered - what caused Laura's death? what did Alex Thomas mean to the two sisters? why did Richard kill himself? who actually wrote the novel - The Blind Assassin? - some are more obvious than the others, still the process of unraveling kept me very engrossed. Now if all this seems too complicated, trust me we are in good hands. Atwood's skill in weaving all these stories and tying them all up is similar to that of a brilliant musician or a visual artist who brings it together!

Interwoven into all these stories, is also the story of Canada during the Depression and the Second World War.  Losing the button factory during the Depression led to Iris' marriage to Richard and her dad drinking himself to death; the sisters' relationship with Alex Thomas was always in the hiding because he was a hunted Communist;  Richard's stance over the years wavers from admiration for the Nazis to supporting the Communists under "Uncle Joe" (Stalin) - through these episodes in Iris' and Laura's lives we get a vivid picture of Canada during the '30s and '40s. Also not lost on me were the descriptions of the women and their lives as they lived through the war outside their homes and the violence within the confines of their own home.

The other interesting aspect of the novel was how the wild fantasy ride of the science fiction novel within the novel was a clever allegory for the events of the Second World War. Residents of Sakiel Norn joining with the Barbarians to fight the Lizard Men, is a possible allegory for Allied forces joining with the much hated Communists to take on the Nazis. The plight of the mute maiden and her noble rescuer the Blind Assassin - parallels Iris' & Laura's state and Alex's fate at the end of the war. Now is that intentional or am I reading too much between the lines? I don't know, but it was interesting alright!


Iris Chase will remain one of the most memorable characters in fiction for me. She is in no way perfect. I expected a lot more out of her and blamed her indirectly for Laura's death. There were many things she could've done and should've done, but i also forgave her as she was certainly a victim of circumstances too.

Overall, great plot - check; great characters - check; great technique - check; great storytelling - check. The only negative,  I now don't have Chile or China with me as I thought this one would take much longer to finish. I didn't expect to be sleep deprived because of this book, but I am!

OBOC - Central African Republic

It is quite a shame that before I read "My Country, Africa" I neither knew where Central African Republic was (despite its name!) nor did I know who Andree Blouin was. This story is not only her autobiography, but is also a great introduction to the history, culture and politics of many African countries - the DRC, Republic of Congo, and Guinea and the characters in this book are some of the movers and shakers of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa in the early '60s.

I read this book in about 12 hours not because it was an easy read, but because it was so hard to put down. I doubt if Forsyth or Le Carre could've written such a story with so much political intrigue. In addition as someone who reads feminist literature, the story of Africa's "black pasionaria" had so many insights into the gender issues of Africa that it became irresistible.

Let me start from the beginning. Born to a Frenchman (Pierre Gerbillat) and his child-bride Josephine of the Banziri people, Andree's fate was destined to be that of all metisee of that generation. Thrown into a catholic orphanage by her father (her mother had no right or say in her fate), she shows early signs of rebellion, but torture, guilt and irrational fear of God all in the form of the nuns has the better of her. Despite the torments suffered by her soul and spirit, she escapes from being coerced into a marriage and sets off to become independent. Her complicated relationship with both her parents also lays the ground for some of the most beautiful and poignant descriptions of African culture.

But as fate had it, despite her resoluteness to not become a concubine, she becomes exactly that - a mistress to a Belgian, Roger Serruys whom she meets on a boat on the Congo. Her first love, and her heart triumps over her mind and she settles down with him into an existence where she had his love, but not the respect or recognition of society. Their inherent difference in attitudes towards the child laborers and prisoners of Belgian Congo drives a chasm between the two. She then moves on to her next relationship with Charles Greutz a die-hard racist but his saving grace was that he cared for her and for her child Rita (Roger's). Needing the stability, she gets into the relationship and is a silent witness to the racist treatment Charles metes out even to her mom.

When Rene, her son through Charles is denied quinine for his malaria, Andree comes face to face with the absolute cruelty of the colonial regime. Her son was 3/4th white, but that was not enough to get him a Quinine card and he succumbs to malaria. This tragedy showed her how far the colonial scorn could possibly go.  Deciding that Africa was no longer safe for Rita, she accepts Charles' proposal of marriage and the ticket to Europe where she would meet her future husband Andre - her first, real, relationship not hampered by the colonial legacy.

With her personal life in order, her travel to Siguri in Guinea and contact with the RDA and their charismatic leader Sekou Toure put her on the political path. She had two clear focus areas 1) African unity 2) improving the plight of African women and bringing them into the political fold. With these as her mantra she played a pivotal role in the birth of the DRC, and the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. This also led to close political involvement and friendships with leaders like Lumumba, Gizenga, and Boganda. Her campaign to bring the Congolese women into the political arena and the crucial role she played in carrying the protocol (hidden in her chignon!) that would procliam Lumumba as the President of the Congo despite the Belgian authorities' schemes were nothing short of absolute courage and political astuteness. She also had the uncanny ability to reach out to people who didn't necessarily share her vision, all for the sake of African Unity. Unfortunately Lumumba was betrayed and the birthing pains of the Congo due to the unpreparedness to take over from the Colonial regime and ethnic differences are still plaguing the region.

Anyone who has any idea about Africa understands the huge injustice done to that Continent as a result of brutal colonialism. Now on top of that imagine being a woman under Colonization- that's a double whammy. If being a colored woman is complicated enough add to that the disadvantage of being a child of interracial "marriage" with a father who fails to recognize you - that is where Andree began, at the very bottom of the social pecking order. Finding dignity in her life and her situation, and struggling for her family led her to finding dignity for Africa and joining her countrymen in their struggles. Truly a great life of an extraordinary woman. In her own words "I carry my Africa within me, wherever I go. In my home, Africa finds her own"... and through her words, I got a glimpse of Africa as I never had before!

OBOC - Cambodia

Looking back on the 30+ countries I've completed, I realized that most of the stories are not necessarily what one can call as "light reading". War, Genocide, Poverty, Colonialism all form the undercurrent for many of the stories. Cambodia is no exception.

"First they killed my father" is the moving autobiography of Loung Ung who survived the killing fields of Cambodia, and moved on to become an advocate against violence for the UN. What is powerful about this story is how a 5 year old can dig deep within herself and find strength to survive brutality, hunger, and tragedy in the midst of absolute despair.

Under the Khmer Rouge millions of urban residents were forcefully "relocated" to rural Cambodia in an attempt to rid the country of loyalists to the previous Government. Urban dwellers were also viewed with suspicion as they were deemed to be "polluted" with capitalistic ideas. Walking for 8 days from the capital Phnom Penh Loung's family seeks refuge in one camp after the other, hiding their identity (Loung's father worked for the previous Government). The family gets separated and unfortunately not all of them survive - losing her dad, her oldest sister and her mother and her baby sister, it was a miracle that Loung survived.

Her experiences as a child soldier in the work camps, witnessing of the execution of a Khmer Rouge soldier, escaping rape, narrowly escaping death from hunger, infections and bullets, working in leach infected waters - makes you wonder how can a child ever recover from these harrowing experiences. Finally reuniting with her surviving siblings, she escapes to Thailand with her oldest brother - Meng and his wife Eang and from there gets a ticket to the US as a refugee.

Throughout the 5 years under the Khmer Rouge she and her sister Chou faced similar atrocities and being of different temperaments they each coped in their own way. Leaving Chou behind in Cambodia, must've been overwhelming for Loung as she must've been consumed by guilt. I believe this prompted her to write her second book "The Lucky Child".

While the book is a story of the victims of the Pol Pot regime it is still very much a story of a survivor and is one of hope. This is a story of someone who has overcome the childhood scars and survived in an alien nation and then made their life one of purpose. To think that all these happened not too long ago only shows  the need for the world to learn more from these stories and makes one more appreciative of Loung's role in the campaign against landmines.

As a small aside: I wanted to read more about how Loung wrote this book as she could not have possibly remembered every small detail as she was 5 years old at the beginning of the invasion and was only 9 or 10 when she moved to the US. I am no psychologist, but wouldn't blocking these memories out be one of the chief ways of coping or were the scars too much that even a child that young remembers and recollects everything that happened? I don't know. Hey at 5, or even 9 my biggest concern was getting through school and the only violence i had experienced was the simulated ones on some badly made Tamil movies ! How can I even pretend to understand what she must've gone through!

OBOC - Cameroon

"Mission Accomplished"... before you think I am doing a George Bush by declaring victory in OBOC a bit prematurely (I still have 100 odd countries to go, and I only hope it won't last as long as the Iraq war!)... I am just referring to Mongo Beti's comic novel "Mission terminee" which I read in English as "Mission Accomplished".

Despite failing his Baccalaureat exam in the "best tradition", Jean Marie Medza is charged with an all important duty as a messenger to the remote village of Kala, to bring back the wife of a relative, Niam,  who had fled her husband's home unable to bear his abusiveness. Going to Kala on a bicycle with nervous apprehension, our hero is pleasantly surprised by the welcome he receives at his uncle's home, and the friendly warmth of his cousin Zambo only to discover that the object of his mission has run away from her father's home with another man. Forced to spend many days at Kala, he receives the attention of everyone in the village as the only town-boy amidst the country folk who was educated by the white man. Compared to the abuse he suffers at his father's hands, Medza finds himself being elevated to a demi-God status in the village and for the first time forms a great friendship with other boys of his own age thanks to Zambo and his friend.

What starts out as a comical adventure, turns about to be a coming of age story of Medza, where he develops a deeper understanding of himself, his culture and the "colonized African". At the end of his journey, he finally stands up to his father but is forced to leave his home and his young wife. He summarizes his entire understanding in light of his experience in the following words "the tragedy our nation is suffering today is that of a man left to his own devices in a world which does not belong to him, which he has not made and does not understand. it is the tragedy of man without an intellectual direction, a man walking blindly through the dark in some hostile city like New York....How will he solve the intricacies of a subway map or know where to change trains?"

Besides the comical nature of the story, I loved Mongo Beti's sketches of the lead characters, Medza, Zambo and Medza's father ("living example of the astonishing results that can occur when Western hypocrisy and commercial materialism are grafted onto a first-rate African intelligence") in particular. Also the seemingly pointless jocular ramblings that Medza had with the villagers of Kala were also very revealing - what did Colonization, Constitution, Law, Capitalism, Communism mean to people flung in remote corners of Cameroon?What does it say about Medza, who finally escapes the tyranny of his father, while at the same time benefiting from the education he received, but never comes back for his wife? How does he resolve the conflict between his heart and his mind? Is this the dilemma the educated elite of Africa (or for that matter, any colonized developing country) face?

Wikipedia tells me that the book received praise for its realism and criticism from the likes of Chinua Achebe for romanticizing the past. To me, it was one of those books which appear very easy to read, with farcical situations, but actually have a few layers if one cares to look.

OBOC - Burundi

Everyone, well almost everyone, has heard of the Rwandan genocide and know that it had something to do with ethnic tensions between Hutus and Tutsis. But until I read "The voice in my heart" by Gilbert Tuhabonye I had no idea how the Rwandan conflict was closely tied to the political history of Burundi and the 2 clashes of genocidal proportions that took place in Burundi in the early '70s and '90s.

Here is a brief primer if you are interested, else skip to the next paragraph.  (This does not figure in the story of Gilbert, but is a good-to-know background). In a country of Hutu majority (>80%),  the Tutsis have held power and senior positions in the Military and Government since Independence. In the first post-independence elections despite a sweeping Hutu victory, a Tutsi was appointed the Prime Minister and this led to a failed coup attempt which was followed by Hutu insurgents killing Tutsis and the Tutsi controlled military retaliating with a systematic slaughter. This also led to many Hutus fleeing to Rwanda resulting in radicalization of the overall Hutu population in Rwanda. This was the infamous first Burundian genocide.

Gilbert's story happens in the '90s when the first Hutu President Ndadaye was assassinated during the second genocide. What followed was a Hutu retaliation on the Tutsi population and the subsequent crackdown by the army. Gilbert growing up in an idyllic village in Mount Fuku in Bururi was at that time attending middle school in the prestigious Lycie Kimbee area, where he had already established himself as a super star athlete. When the Hutu population rounded up the Tutsi students and hacked some of them to death, and set fire to the remaining, Gilbert was the only one who miraculously survived the slaughter. Using the burned bodies of his schoolmates as a shelter and a human bone to break open the window, Gilbert escapes and is eventually picked up the army where he is treated for his burns. Slowly regaining his strength - physical and mental, he does not give up on his dream to go to the US on a track scholarship. Despite the harrowing experiences, his faith in god and the kindness of people around helps him heal and achieve his dreams.

Gilbert's biography - his childhood days, his family, the education system in Burundi and his athletic feats are interwoven with the slaughter episode at the school in alternate chapters. This is an interesting piece of writing and takes the reader from the idyllic childhood spent chasing cows, to the horrific incidents of that day in a swing of emotions. I also found the comparison to Bosnia interesting given that it was around the same time when the genocide was happening there.

I especially liked the description of his simple, yet peaceful life in Mount Fuku. Childhood days spent roaming around the hills, chasing cows, running barefoot to fetch water, singing along when doing chores, the sounds of the Kirundi language, the staple food and the drumming and other rituals. Also his description of the education system in Burundi, closely mirrors the system in India and I found this fascinating. It also gives you great insight about athletes from developing countries who manage to compete in international arena despite complete lack of resources - be it facilities, sponsorships, coaching support etc.

Gilbert's success despite his humble beginnings is attributed by him to his unflinching faith in god. I believe in addition to faith, his hard work, finding a mentor in Adolphe, single mindedness of purpose, and an openness to new experiences all had significant contributions to his success. Overall, a very interesting biography - inspiring and informative.

OBOC - Burkina Faso

It does look like it's been a long time since i wrote my last review. There is a good reason for that. Malidoma Some's "Of Water and the Spirit" was not an easy read for someone like me. What do I mean by that? For a mind used to thinking like a Westernized brain, which has rejected many ritualistic traditions of its own culture, reading about shamans, magic and more rituals is certainly a difficult task. But I was up for the challenge and it proved to be an interesting read with many valid points.

Malidoma (the name means "Be friends with the stranger or enemy" )- a 4 year old who was snatched by the French colonialists from the comfort of his tribe, to be converted to a "civilized christian", spends 16 years of his life in a Catholic Missionary school in an almost imprisoned state. Slowly losing touch with his Dagara culture and acquiring French language skills while forgetting his native tongue and his native ways, there comes a point when he can't take it anymore and so he escapes from the school and traces his way back to his village. But, now that he has learned the white man ways, he is treated with suspicion by the village elders and he himself is caught between two worlds with no ability to communicate his inner feelings. At this point, it is determined that he should undergo the initiation rites of an adolescent boy to see if he can re-integrate with his tribe. How he comes through these rites and goes on to act as a bridge between the White Man and the Black Man forms the rest of the story.


Firstly, the book is written under the premise that the Western civilization has lost its soul and needs to look at traditional and indigenous societies to better understand them and come up with new ways of communicating! Even if you disagree with the first part of the sentence, I bet you can't disagree with the latter half. Despite living in a globalized world, people often exhibit very poor understanding of other cultures or groups of people who are not like them and so the role of people like Malidoma gains importance.

Secondly, the book manages to capture the sense of homelessness many of us feel these days as we get uprooted from our native cultures and are forced to become citizens of a completely different kinds of society. This issue is center stage right now with culture wars cropping up everywhere, from banning the burkha in France to questioning what it means to be British in the UK or the anti-gay rights bill in Uganda!

The third theme of the book is around native wisdom, the role of elders in society, the need for initiation rites for the adolescence, and there are some very valuable insights into these topics from Indigenous societies which modern societies can pick up from. This is also something that Joseph Campbell used to talk about.

But a major part of the book is the description of the shamanistic rituals and the magic and wisdom of the Dagara. It took me sometime to go from suspending my rational mind to following along with wonderment the mystical rituals of the Dagara. The beautiful relationship that Malidoma shared with his grandfather and the scary rituals associated with death, the perplexing initiation rituals like staring at a tree, jumping through  fire hole, swimming under the currents, finding your cave with the help of your animal of choice and being buried alive for a day were all grippingly narrated. Here my little reading of Joseph Campbell and listening to his lectures helped tremendously as I started looking for allegorical meanings for the rituals instead of their literal ones.

Just a minor complaint - What was missing completely from the book was any details on the women in the Dagara society. Other than a few pages about his relationship with his mom, the entire book was about the transformation of boy into manhood and that might very well be the theme of the book. Given that the book is emphasizing the role of communication between different kinds of people, it would've been nice to understand a bit more about the significant other of the Dagara society :)

The book is not an easy read at all, there is lot of pain and agony and perplexing rites which require one to delve into their deeper meaning, but at the end it is well worth one's time as it offers a window into a society which is quite alien to people in the West. Malidoma who is now teaching both in the USA and France is a great example of a "homeless" but not rootless man who is also a bridge between two worlds