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hasbrez04's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
M’ha costat un rato acabar-lo, més que res perquè m’ha semblat que no arribava enlloc. El personatge en si no evoluciona, i el llibre acaba presentant una vegada i una altra la mateixa idea d’una Àfrica salvatge, misteriosa i supersticiosa que és invencible als desitjos de modernitat i valors dels europeus que l’havien dominat.
Entre tot hi ha un home que entèn aquest poder, i tot i intentar combatre’l i construïr un nou futur, acaba adonant-se de que aquest futur no li correspon a ell, ni als que s’aprofiten del present, sinó a aquells que no tenen res i ho volen tot. La corrupció, els grans desitgos i el racisme vertebren aquesta Àfrica post-colonial que el protagonista viu des de la distància i amb una eterna por, però que acaba veient un bri d’esperança que el fa renunciar.
Entre tot hi ha un home que entèn aquest poder, i tot i intentar combatre’l i construïr un nou futur, acaba adonant-se de que aquest futur no li correspon a ell, ni als que s’aprofiten del present, sinó a aquells que no tenen res i ho volen tot. La corrupció, els grans desitgos i el racisme vertebren aquesta Àfrica post-colonial que el protagonista viu des de la distància i amb una eterna por, però que acaba veient un bri d’esperança que el fa renunciar.
yeastvan's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
amb3rlina's review against another edition
3.0
I found this book engaging and interesting, but in the end it didn't really leave me with a strong connection or response. There were some wonderful thoughts the author put forward about racism, sense of home, and a person's path through life. But somehow it just didn't move me. It was a good book, just not a great book for me.
doma_22's review against another edition
3.0
La prima volta che leggo qualcosa di Mankell anche se non mi è del tutto sconosciuto dato che ho visto qualche giallo su un canale tematico dei suoi libri.
Certo, la differenza tra libri e fiction c'è sempre; solo che questo romanzo non è un giallo.
Sono partita bene, ammaliata dalle descrizione e proprio dalla sua scrittura fluida e anche "poetica".
Il vero problema del calo di interesse è, non tanto la storia, ma proprio il protagonista, Hans. Mi ha fatto venire prima l'ansia e poi un nervosismo! Quest'uomo è più indeciso di me, per la miseria!
Sin da ragazzo e poi da adulto in Zambia, si lascia trasportare dagli altri, sempre indeciso, incostante e anche quando prende una decisione, giusta o sbagliata che sia, se ne pente subito e l'indecisione riprende il sopravvento su di lui.
Dice di continuo che vuol rientrare in Svezia, anno dopo anno rimanda ed infine fa passare ben diciotto anni!
La storia alterna la sua giovinezza in Svezia, con la madre che ha abbandonato la famiglia ed un padre boscaiolo che ripensa sempre al suo vecchio lavoro di marinaio. Un ragazzino indeciso sin dall'inizio, che alla fine, crescendo, adempie al desiderio di una sua amica di andare in una missione africana. E così dopo gli studi, da adulto, eccolo lì, in Zambia, nazione da poco diventata indipendente dopo anni di colonialismo.
L'incontro fortuito con una coppia di inglesi, proprietari di una "farm", amici di un'altra donna inglese proprietaria di un allevamento di galline per la produzione di uova, lo introdurrà in questo mondo particolare, pieno di corruzione, di ribellione da parte dei locali che "odiano" i pochi bianchi rimasti che cercano di sopravvivere e che vengono uccisi barbaramente.
Una storia cruda da questo punto di vista, non sai bene come schierarti perché si, gli africani saranno stati oppressi, venivano e in alcuni casi sono ancora trattati male, ma non tutti i bianchi li sfruttano, lo stesso Hans cerca di migliorare le loro condizioni in tutti i modi ma vogliono ucciderlo ugualmente e ciò mi ha lasciata perplessa....
Ho sceso da 4 a 3 la mia valutazione solo per "colpa" di Hans che mi ha delusa. La storia è particolare ma il nostro protagonista poteva essere molto diverso.
Leggerò comunque altro di Mankell per vedere se ci sono differenze con i thriller.
Certo, la differenza tra libri e fiction c'è sempre; solo che questo romanzo non è un giallo.
Sono partita bene, ammaliata dalle descrizione e proprio dalla sua scrittura fluida e anche "poetica".
Il vero problema del calo di interesse è, non tanto la storia, ma proprio il protagonista, Hans. Mi ha fatto venire prima l'ansia e poi un nervosismo! Quest'uomo è più indeciso di me, per la miseria!
Sin da ragazzo e poi da adulto in Zambia, si lascia trasportare dagli altri, sempre indeciso, incostante e anche quando prende una decisione, giusta o sbagliata che sia, se ne pente subito e l'indecisione riprende il sopravvento su di lui.
Dice di continuo che vuol rientrare in Svezia, anno dopo anno rimanda ed infine fa passare ben diciotto anni!
La storia alterna la sua giovinezza in Svezia, con la madre che ha abbandonato la famiglia ed un padre boscaiolo che ripensa sempre al suo vecchio lavoro di marinaio. Un ragazzino indeciso sin dall'inizio, che alla fine, crescendo, adempie al desiderio di una sua amica di andare in una missione africana. E così dopo gli studi, da adulto, eccolo lì, in Zambia, nazione da poco diventata indipendente dopo anni di colonialismo.
L'incontro fortuito con una coppia di inglesi, proprietari di una "farm", amici di un'altra donna inglese proprietaria di un allevamento di galline per la produzione di uova, lo introdurrà in questo mondo particolare, pieno di corruzione, di ribellione da parte dei locali che "odiano" i pochi bianchi rimasti che cercano di sopravvivere e che vengono uccisi barbaramente.
Una storia cruda da questo punto di vista, non sai bene come schierarti perché si, gli africani saranno stati oppressi, venivano e in alcuni casi sono ancora trattati male, ma non tutti i bianchi li sfruttano, lo stesso Hans cerca di migliorare le loro condizioni in tutti i modi ma vogliono ucciderlo ugualmente e ciò mi ha lasciata perplessa....
Ho sceso da 4 a 3 la mia valutazione solo per "colpa" di Hans che mi ha delusa. La storia è particolare ma il nostro protagonista poteva essere molto diverso.
Leggerò comunque altro di Mankell per vedere se ci sono differenze con i thriller.
taetris's review
2.0
Hans Olofson grows up in Sweden and then moves to Zambia. The story alternates between scenes in Sweden and those in Zambia. The narrative makes reveals along tge way and seems to be building toward something. However, in the end, it just kind of fizzles out. I was also not a fan of some of the more meandering half-pages.
hayesstw's review against another edition
4.0
One of the things I've heard a lot about in the past few years is postcolonialism. There's also a lot of talk about postmodernism and postmodernity, but I'm told that that is not really relevant to Africa and that postcolonialism is the thing. And apparently the book to read about postcolonialism is [b:Orientalism|355190|Orientalism|Edward W. Said|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174036241s/355190.jpg|2310058] by [a:Edward Said|24390|Edward W. Said|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1288776843p2/24390.jpg], but whenever I look for it in the library someone else has taken it out.
But this novel is set in postcolonial Zambia, at least in part, and got me thinking about the nature of colonialism and the postcolonial condition.
Henning Mankell is probably best known, to English-speaking readers at any rate, for his detective novels featuring the boozy melancholic detective Kurt Wallander of southern Sweden. This is very different, though actually about a third of the book seems to be a slightly reworked version of another of Mankell's books, [b:A bridge to the stars|1142899|A Bridge to the Stars|Henning Mankell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1236099379s/1142899.jpg|1503569]. That is a sort of Bildungsroman, about a woodcutter's son growing up in the north of Sweden, and befriending a woman who had been disfigured by a botched nose operation. In this book there are flashbacks to that, and the protagonist, Hans Olofson, travels to Zambia to fulfil an ambition of the disfigured woman who died -- visiting a mission station that had been founded by a Swede in the remote north-western part of Zambia.
Olofson feels alienated from the moment of his arrival, and makes his way to the mission station, spends a couple of days there, and then leaves again. He takes up an invitation to stay with some white farmers he met on the train, and ends up staying in Zambia for eighteen years. But Zambia, seen through the eyes of an alienated Swede, is a nightmare place. Moving in the circles of white farmers who were struggling to adapt to the postcolonial milieu, he comes to see the blacks through the eyes of the white farmers, and most of the blacks they encounter are their employees, who find whites as inscrutable as the whites find them. But because Olofson is Swedish, he also has a somewhat more detached view of the white farmers, and is therefore an observer of the relations between the people around him, and tries, somewhat ineffectually, to establish better relations when he finds himself in the position of being an employer.
And I found myself repelled by the view of both black and white people in the book. Were black people in Zambia in the 1970s and 1980s really like those protrayed in the book, or was it simply because they were being seen through the distorting lens of the white bwana mentality? And were the whites really like that? And then I thought, yes, to some extent the whites were. My mother had cousins who lived in what was then called Northern Rhodesia, and I remember one of them telling us that her husband, when walking down the pavement, used to press burning cigarettes into the necks of black people who didn't scuttle out of his way into the gutter quickly enough (to her credit that was one of the reasons she gave for divorcing him).
I remembered when I was a student at the University of Natal in the mid-1960s, and the Rhodesian students were generally far more racist than the South African ones. When Northern Rhodesia became independent as Zambia in 1964, every student from there (and they were all white) was given an independence celebration kit, with a small Zambian flag, a record of the national anthem ("Stand and sing of Zambia, proud and free" to the tune of Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika) and various other goodies, and they were given money to organise themselves an independence party, so that even those who didn't like the idea of blacks running the country had a jolly booze up to celebrate. Some of them, probably the majority of them, probably came from families like the white families depicted in the book. So yes, the colonialist attitudes were there, even in a postcolonial society.
I've never been to Zambia, though I have occasionally met Zambians in other places, but the book implies that black people are like all over Africa, at least when seen through eyes of the white employer class. And most of the white people and black people I've known haven't been like that. But if you look at certain web sites, yes, you can find that such attitudes are still fostered, even in South Africa.
In that period in South Africa there was also an influx of whenwes from newly-independent Kenya, who were given large chunks of time on the radio to tell us what a marvellous job the National Party was doing in running the country and keeping the blacks in their place, unlike Kenya. And their attitudes were probably pretty close to those of the whites depicted in this book.
I found this an immensely sad book, and the protagonist seemed to have had a very sad and lonely life. Since Mankell has written anoth very similar book, I wonder if it isn't semi-autobiographical. And I wonder what picture Swedish people reading it will get of Africa. And it is about a postcolonial society, though I wonder if it is a full and accurate reflection of the postcolonial condition.
But this novel is set in postcolonial Zambia, at least in part, and got me thinking about the nature of colonialism and the postcolonial condition.
Henning Mankell is probably best known, to English-speaking readers at any rate, for his detective novels featuring the boozy melancholic detective Kurt Wallander of southern Sweden. This is very different, though actually about a third of the book seems to be a slightly reworked version of another of Mankell's books, [b:A bridge to the stars|1142899|A Bridge to the Stars|Henning Mankell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1236099379s/1142899.jpg|1503569]. That is a sort of Bildungsroman, about a woodcutter's son growing up in the north of Sweden, and befriending a woman who had been disfigured by a botched nose operation. In this book there are flashbacks to that, and the protagonist, Hans Olofson, travels to Zambia to fulfil an ambition of the disfigured woman who died -- visiting a mission station that had been founded by a Swede in the remote north-western part of Zambia.
Olofson feels alienated from the moment of his arrival, and makes his way to the mission station, spends a couple of days there, and then leaves again. He takes up an invitation to stay with some white farmers he met on the train, and ends up staying in Zambia for eighteen years. But Zambia, seen through the eyes of an alienated Swede, is a nightmare place. Moving in the circles of white farmers who were struggling to adapt to the postcolonial milieu, he comes to see the blacks through the eyes of the white farmers, and most of the blacks they encounter are their employees, who find whites as inscrutable as the whites find them. But because Olofson is Swedish, he also has a somewhat more detached view of the white farmers, and is therefore an observer of the relations between the people around him, and tries, somewhat ineffectually, to establish better relations when he finds himself in the position of being an employer.
And I found myself repelled by the view of both black and white people in the book. Were black people in Zambia in the 1970s and 1980s really like those protrayed in the book, or was it simply because they were being seen through the distorting lens of the white bwana mentality? And were the whites really like that? And then I thought, yes, to some extent the whites were. My mother had cousins who lived in what was then called Northern Rhodesia, and I remember one of them telling us that her husband, when walking down the pavement, used to press burning cigarettes into the necks of black people who didn't scuttle out of his way into the gutter quickly enough (to her credit that was one of the reasons she gave for divorcing him).
I remembered when I was a student at the University of Natal in the mid-1960s, and the Rhodesian students were generally far more racist than the South African ones. When Northern Rhodesia became independent as Zambia in 1964, every student from there (and they were all white) was given an independence celebration kit, with a small Zambian flag, a record of the national anthem ("Stand and sing of Zambia, proud and free" to the tune of Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika) and various other goodies, and they were given money to organise themselves an independence party, so that even those who didn't like the idea of blacks running the country had a jolly booze up to celebrate. Some of them, probably the majority of them, probably came from families like the white families depicted in the book. So yes, the colonialist attitudes were there, even in a postcolonial society.
I've never been to Zambia, though I have occasionally met Zambians in other places, but the book implies that black people are like all over Africa, at least when seen through eyes of the white employer class. And most of the white people and black people I've known haven't been like that. But if you look at certain web sites, yes, you can find that such attitudes are still fostered, even in South Africa.
In that period in South Africa there was also an influx of whenwes from newly-independent Kenya, who were given large chunks of time on the radio to tell us what a marvellous job the National Party was doing in running the country and keeping the blacks in their place, unlike Kenya. And their attitudes were probably pretty close to those of the whites depicted in this book.
I found this an immensely sad book, and the protagonist seemed to have had a very sad and lonely life. Since Mankell has written anoth very similar book, I wonder if it isn't semi-autobiographical. And I wonder what picture Swedish people reading it will get of Africa. And it is about a postcolonial society, though I wonder if it is a full and accurate reflection of the postcolonial condition.
rwedewer's review against another edition
3.0
A Swedish man who makes an impetuous trip to Zambia as a kind of penance, stays 18 years, facing a frightful racial divide.
I often think translations are a bit ham-handed and obscure some or all of the literary merit of a book. This book by Swedish author Henning Mankell though, it beautifully written--and translated. I only give it three stars because the movement from past to present often seems a bit awkward and out of place. Still, the story gets told.
I often think translations are a bit ham-handed and obscure some or all of the literary merit of a book. This book by Swedish author Henning Mankell though, it beautifully written--and translated. I only give it three stars because the movement from past to present often seems a bit awkward and out of place. Still, the story gets told.
waynewaynus's review against another edition
5.0
I didn't really expect to enjoy this and it was moving , thoughtful and interesting. Books about Africa have never held any interest for me and this was very good. Be warned it is not a crime novel but a novel about a mans life.
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