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"Set in Kenya against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love. After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she'd longed for is much changed. Her father's new companion--a strange, intolerant woman--has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites. As Rachel struggles to find her place in her home and her country, she initiates a covert relationship, one that will demand from her a gross act of betrayal. One man knows her secret, and he has made it clear how she can buy his silence. But she knows something of her own, something she has never told anyone. And her knowledge brings her power"--… (meer)
Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh is an excellent historical fiction novel set in the 1950’s in Kenya when it was still under British Rule. The story of Rachel who lost her mother at a young age and returns from England to Kenya is loaded with detail melodrama. After the death of her mother, her father remained in Kenya so the novel documents their reunion after a six year separation. Rachel witnesses the changes in Kenya. A fast paced easy read that leaves the reader is invested in the emotional guts of the characters. ( )
Engaging and enraging. Am next looking for a copy of A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o for a Kenyan perspective on the same events. Anybody have one handy? No? ILL it is, then.
#ReadICT category 4: Set somewhere you've never been ( )
LISTENED ON AUDIBLE--VERY GOOD; VERY GOOD WRITING; REPETATIVE, INTERESTING STORY--A PARALLEL BETWEEN THE GIRL'S LIFE COMING HOME- AND HER FATHER'S FIANACE TAKING OVER --TO KENYA AND THE FIGHTERS (MAU MAU) AND THE BRITISH TAKING OVER KENYA. VERY INTERESTING ( )
It was a good book. I never once thought about putting it down, but I feel it could have been a much more powerful book than what it was. Rachel, the main character was rather insipid. The setting of the book was great. Kenya on the edge of political unrest in the 1950's. The doors have opened enough for unrest and anger to fester within the Black natives of Kenya. The cries for social justice are spreading through the country. Whites remain desperate to maintain status quo. There is a good deal of action in the book. Scenes are eye opening to the struggles the Black population have and have to endure. ( )
Compelling story about life in Kenya after World War II when the native people were beginning their fight for independence. After being sent to England for school, Rachel returns to Kenya to find the world she knew changing. Her father’s new companion is rigid and intolerant of the natives working for them. Used to exploring with her mother and visiting the small villages of the natives to teach, provide clothing and health care, Rachel struggles with her stepmother’s point of view. She had been tutored by an educated black man, who returned to the Kenyan farm after serving in the military during World War II. Within in the main characters, the author has done a good job showing the attitudes of the British colonials and the native citizens who have no rights. Well done storytelling give the reader a feel for why and how the British Empire fell in Africa. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
The steward has said we will dock at 9:00 o'clock, but I am too excited to sleep, and I walk onto deck in the dark, long before the sun comes up, watching for the first sight of land.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
He is a curious mix of down at heel and well knitted out.
He hunted with a bow and arrow, and I used to love watching the flick of the thin arrow floating high up into the air, its soft flight belying the deadly accuracy of its aim.
The plains of the central highlands stretch into the hazy distance like the shimmering, tawny back of a lion. Herds of wildebeest and zebra mingle in the long grass, and far off I can see elephants moving, their bodies silhouetted against the afternoon sky like dark storm clouds.
The farm became the repository for all my dreams.
Across the room comes the sound of Big Ben chiming in London. It is the news broadcast from England, and the men and women strain forward in their seats to hear the voices, brittle with distance, emanating from the radio.
Grief turns in my chest like an animal shifting in its nest; stretches its needle limbs into the corners of my body, into the backs of my eyes.
The sun beats down on us, and I feel myself slowing, unused to the way it crushes, layer upon layer of heat.
White egrets float like flags over the banks, dipping their long bills into the mud.
I see a hamerkop sitting on a branch which emerges from the water like the mast of a sunken ship. The bird's deep brown plumage and strange prehistoric head seem to come from a world long forgotten.
As I stand and watch, a herd of elephant emerge from the bush on the far side to drink, crowding round the water's edge. A hippo bursts air from his nose and it sounds like a greeting.
She died on her way to the boat that would take her home to me. My head explodes in a kaleidoscope of fractured images: the slaughtered pigs, the African on the floor of the factory, the blood in the car, on the road, and my mother, motionless, caught in time so many thousands of miles away, while I spin on into a future without her.
"After a fair trial," my father says, holding Steven's gaze. "After a fair trial," Steven agrees, his voice yielding, as if surrendering to the trivial niceties of a meddling conscience.
There is a strengthen in him, in his quietness; he has learned to be invisible.
I have come home to find the farm ransacked by a future I don't yet understand.
What remains is a small catalog of a childhood interrupted.
I haven't been in the presence of someone like this before. It is as though all the people I have known up until now have been like toy soldiers with their feet set apart on a lead base, and he is real; in movement; on a course that I am compelled to follow. "Authority is not a substitute for truth."
The clicking of the needles, the warm air, the shifting, flickering shade cast their languid spell over me, until the past has slipped its shackles and is spilling over into the present, like a waking dream.
I hang on his every word. He is leaving a trail of golden thread, and later, in the quiet of my room, I will stitch it into a tapestry that will bind me to my past.
The air is full of a soft dust that seems to catch and hold the last particles of the sinking sun, so that the earth is drenched in a haze of golden light.
His eyes are cold and blank like the eyes of a fish.
She turns the brush over and picks the dark hairs from the bristles, then drops them into the bin, and I see them fall weightlessly through the air like a spider.
I am reluctant. Any conversation that my father cannot bring himself to have with me himself is bound to be unpleasant. And I am uneasy with the intimacy of her nakedness. I feel as though she might use it against me.
"It's all right," he says, and the patient softness of his voice loosens something inside me.
His hand is barely touching me, but it is there and I don't know how it became true or whether is fault in it, but I know that he is the only person who can offer me comfort, the only person whose presence can make me feel as though everything might—after all—be all right.
Her cries come out of silence and fall back into silence, like the screams of an impala caught in the jaws of a lion.
My father bends down to pick up the fragments, as though it might still be within his grasp to mend the situation.
They slipped away into the forest, Steven says, like bats into the night.
My father and Sara go to the funeral, and I am left behind to watch the empty house.
A few nights later she appears for dinner, fully dressed, but when I look at her I see that there is something changed in her—a looseness behind her eyes—as though the stitches have been picked out and she is unraveling.
The menace is tangible; thick in the air. A slow drum starts beating somewhere in the hills.
The low thudding of the drums continues as Sara and I eat dinner, lifting into the air with the rising moon—a theatrical score, heightening our anxiety. We eat with our revolvers on the table. The night outside feels vast and menacing, clamoring at our windows, seeping through the cracks of the house, the open seams, and dissolving our security into its blackness.
It is that strange time of early morning when the air tastes wet and the sky lifts second by second from the darkness.
The silence screams loud in my ears.
I remember him carrying me inside, and it flows like liquid through me.
I watch his hands, their delicate movement, the same hands that held me yesterday and feel so distant now.
The clipped English accent permeates the yard with a strange, false security. Reporting from London, thousands of miles away, oblivious to me, to him, to this farm in the very heart of the conflict of which he speaks.
I am terrified by how little I know him; by how much courage I will need to cross the distance.
Kenya is a black man's country. You should go back to where you belong.
I deliberately stay away from the stables. I do not know if he wants to see me.
His eyes settle on mine, for just a moment, and I feel—with a lurch—the power he has over me.
My father leaving again has unhinged her.
I sit up slowing, struggling to move out of the strange world he has left me in.
And I feel the awful, comic absurdity of imperialism, but also the danger. That these children might grow up to disown and disrespect the parents, the grandparents, the culture from which they come.
The bush seems to hold the heat, as though it is a living, breathing thing
When we cut off the main track down to the dam, he puts out a hand and lets it settle against the back of my neck. There is no conversation, but I feel now the current of his desire, and it slips like fire through my groin.
I duck underneath and feel the water seal itself against me like a second skin, covering every particle of my surface. When I open my eyes I see a thousand grains against a golden, dull, gleaming light, like insects caught in amber.
The sun spreads its gradual warmth, heating my body, each moment deeper and warmer than the last, and I feel a deep, saturated contentment spreading through me, a softening of my limbs.
I feel a sadness suddenly, tugging at me. I don't want to leave. I think that this afternoon, with its rain and golden light, has been stolen from a place of darkness.
I know our time together is running out. Slipping through the hourglass faster than I can keep hold of it. The unspoken truth—that this might be the last time we shall see each other.
His voice is soft and compelling, slow and liquid. I hear the truth of what he says, in the richness of his voice.
The sun rises huge and heavy overhead, a burning, shimmering sphere that will pour its molten heat down on us later, but for now it is too low, and it holds in its breath only the premonition of what will come.
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Proof against all odds that love is greater than separation.
"Set in Kenya against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love. After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she'd longed for is much changed. Her father's new companion--a strange, intolerant woman--has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites. As Rachel struggles to find her place in her home and her country, she initiates a covert relationship, one that will demand from her a gross act of betrayal. One man knows her secret, and he has made it clear how she can buy his silence. But she knows something of her own, something she has never told anyone. And her knowledge brings her power"--
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