Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... Born of the Sun: A Namibian Novel (1988)door Joseph Diescho
Namibia (5) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. This novel starts in a typical African way: young man in a village, Muronga, is married and expecting his first child. While many African stories cover the youth's emergence to teen years and first romances, this one starts with the man being torn between the pull of family and traditional life, and the custom of being required to leave the village to do semi-voluntary labor in farms or diamond mines or gold mines of the early Apartheid state of South Africa (which included a territory called South West Africa which is traditionally known as Namibia). Muronga makes the choice to leave to make money for taxes imposed by the white government and to make incremental money if possible. The story tells of his travails as he is subject to discrimination, abuse, imprisonment, and other indignities. Separated from his family, his best friend Kaye, and his home, Muronga acclimates to the work camp life and ultimately is pushed by Apartheid--and the evidence of successful sister countries in Africa breaking free of colonialism - into beginning to rebel against slavery. The book is a type of subtle political polemic against Apartheid and very effective in it's goal. An activist book probably more direct and compelling than Steinbeck's call for unionization, it's a wonderful and risky story. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... WaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
I thought this was a charming novel, even if it were only for the fact that it is hard to find Namibian novels at all, let alone ones that have been translated into a language that I can read. It opened a new world, even if I wasn't completely unfamiliar with it, having studied cultural anthropology in the past. However, a novel gives you quite a different - inside out- view than a textbook ever could give you.
The fact that I was so charmed by this book makes it difficult to judge it in a very critical way. As I normally do... It is not comparable with works by literary masters: it's written in very simple language, there are huge leaps in time that make the development of the main character perhaps a little hard to follow (from a timid village boy to one of the leaders of the liberation movement, just like that). However, it is a novel that deserves to be read, if only to open your eyes for a forgotten country with a sad history. ( )