Loyal reader.... apologies

OK so I skipped yesterday's fiction review - so sue me.... wait, don't sue me that wouldn't be pleasant. So today I will do two reviews because I am a masochist. Both books refer to Africa, so if you need a connection between two disparate works.... there it is.



The Life and Times of Michael K - J. M. Coetzee
The other Coetzee book you should read, and as a consolation to those of you not willing to give up days, weeks or months of your lives trudging through a Russian author's tome on desperation, this short gem will suffice.
This book is just as dark as Waiting for the Barbarians, but may be even more profound for the accessibility of the main character and the obvious South African setting. The implications of the main character's behavior due to his obvious disabilities as a foil for an apathetic society that does equally little in the face of oppression can be powerful. Michaels place outside of society mirrors that of Coetzee who appears again to look on South Africa in impotent horror. It is difficult to imagine a more stark world view (Weltanschauung for your Teutonophiles) than is presented here. If you are interested in the effects of racism, sexism or any other form of general discrimination this book gives an overwhelming portrait of the results of such treatment. Set in mid-1970's South Africa it is not a cheery book, for not so cheery times.
Rating: A-
Related: Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

The Sahara Unveiled - William Langewiesche
Langewiesche must have the best job in the world. Imagine a research job that required you to travel to far distant lands, or in one particularly bizarre example seemingly far distant times (pirates?). In this concise and very readable book he examines the history and lore of the Sahara. Traveling across the vast "wasteland" of a desert the size of the continental U.S. he tells a story rich in detail and somehow timeless. What I mean by that overwrought cliche is that he is able to tell a story about a timeless place without his narrative being too rooted in late 1990's sensibilities. Langewiesche takes what most would consider to be wildly irresponsible risks for a writer from the Atlantic Monthly, but these risks are what makes his books so very interesting. The risks are not behaviors that are unknown, or even unusual for the subjects of his works - which gives him unique insights into their lives and often gains some degree of trust from the locals. In many ways Langewiesche's writing about traveling across the desert in the 1990's is a far better exploration of ancient desert culture than Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels which was written nearly 30 years earlier (it must be said that Simon was not really trying to describe desert culture though, just making observations).
On a whole other level Paul Bowles classic The Sheltering Sky (and for that matter The Stranger by Albert Camus) gives a very colonialist view of the Sahara that is interesting for it's insight into the European human condition more than that of the desert, or of it's peoples.