11/26/07
Cion
In this exuberant follow-up to Ways of Dying, the celebrated South African novelist and playwright Mda once again centers his story upon the professional mourner Toloki—this time, as he makes his way through a sad and surreal America. Set on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, the novel fixes its outsider gaze on everything from Billionaires for Bush to late-night television, viewing American cultural and political life through a near-anthropological lens. But there is much heart here, too, as Toloki is taken in by an impoverished Southern family; he befriends the son, Obed; falls in love with his melancholy, sitar-playing sister, Orpah; and learns to quilt from their mother, Ruth. Simultaneously, he learns how the quilts link Ruth's ancestry to the slave trade and, in particular, the escape of Nicodemus and Abednego, the beloved sons of a slave called The Abyssinian Queen. Cross-cutting between the slave story and Toloki's experiences, the book offers a rich and original picture of the United States on both a personal and grander historical level and is suffused with the same lyricism, vividness and dark, tragic wit that have earned the author previous recognition here and in his homeland.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Heart of Redness
This is one of the most beautiful books I have read in years. Mda skillfully evokes the tensions in contemporary South Africa for blacks caught between the tug of Western, technological culture and their identity in long-standing traditions. The story is given added substance by Mda's recounting the history of similar tensions from the nineteenth century, thus creating deep emotions that propel the characters. The story mixes family feuds, spats between the sexes, and sober deliberations about community versus individual choices, all told with a level of humor that underscores rather than undermines the importance of these issues for South Africa today. --William Gutowski
The Madonna of Excelsior
This is an elemental South African story of relationships across the color line, first at the height of apartheid's madness and then during the freedom struggle and the ongoing transition to democracy. As in Heart of Redness (2002), Mda tells the big story through the personal lives of a few intimately connected people. The first chapters are based on a notorious 1970s trial in which whites and blacks in one small town were convicted under the Immorality Act for the crime of miscegenation. The focus is on a black woman, Niki, and her "Coloured" (mixed-race) daughter, Popi, whose white father commits suicide after the public disgrace. Popi has a white half-brother and also a black brother, who grows up to be a guerrilla fighter. In the transition, Popi becomes a city councilor, always ashamed of her body, an outsider to whites and blacks in the community. But all their identities shift with reconciliation and revenge, corruption and nostalgia. Mda writes from the inside with a rare combination of passion and truth that will connect with readers everywhere. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
The Whale Caller
And it is, so be prepared: Despite the lighthearted and often hilarious antics, this love triangle, like so many others, is tragically unsustainable. Perhaps this is where The Whale Caller defies expectation: If it is a morality play, these are unusually funny, richly developed characters. If it is a quirky, romantic comedy, it's dispensed with a heaping helping of human frailty, tragic behavior and self-destruction. With an offhanded mastery of lyrical language, this gifted storyteller's prose shimmers without extravagance. As if awash in unremitting sun, The Whale Caller begins as a reverie, illuminating the beauty of imperfect love and the thrill of struggling to maintain it. Yet in the end, beyond the whimsy and whales, the deeper, darker concern here is not so much the fragility of love, but the fragility of life itself when one surrenders wholly to the foolish heart.
Reviewed by Steve Amick
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
She Plays with the Darkness
Like all Mda's novels, including Heart of Redness (2002), this contemporary story of southern Africa places contemporary politics in the context of family and community, past and present. The setting here is a mountain village in Lesotho, on the South African border. Radisene is close to his beloved sister, Dikosha, until he leaves for the capital city, Maseru, where be becomes a smart ambulance-chaser, so successful in his machinations that he even sends money back to the village to build his mother a mansion. Dikosha refuses to have anything to do with him. In fact, she lives in her own world of magic and music, closely in touch with the dancers in the local cave paintings that were created by the Bushmen long before the Sotho came there and took the land. Mda's blend of magical realism and the cruel farce of national politics reveals the wildness everywhere. At the heart of the story is the mountain community, never idyllic, bursting with jealousy and spite, yet home through drought, snow, and mist. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Ways of Dying
Writing from the heart of the new South Africa, Mda tells his country's stories through beautifully realized characters whose search for love and connection takes you up close to the black experience, past and present.Ways of Dying is set in the transitional years before the first democratic elections. Toloki has invented his job as professional mourner in a shantytown, and he finds plenty of work. The violence is horrific--by soldiers and police as well as migrant tribal groups and locals--but even after the worst massacre, where children are "necklaced" with burning tires, Toloki finds love, tenderness, and laughter with a woman from his childhood home and they build a shack together in the urban wasteland. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
In this exuberant follow-up to Ways of Dying, the celebrated South African novelist and playwright Mda once again centers his story upon the professional mourner Toloki—this time, as he makes his way through a sad and surreal America. Set on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, the novel fixes its outsider gaze on everything from Billionaires for Bush to late-night television, viewing American cultural and political life through a near-anthropological lens. But there is much heart here, too, as Toloki is taken in by an impoverished Southern family; he befriends the son, Obed; falls in love with his melancholy, sitar-playing sister, Orpah; and learns to quilt from their mother, Ruth. Simultaneously, he learns how the quilts link Ruth's ancestry to the slave trade and, in particular, the escape of Nicodemus and Abednego, the beloved sons of a slave called The Abyssinian Queen. Cross-cutting between the slave story and Toloki's experiences, the book offers a rich and original picture of the United States on both a personal and grander historical level and is suffused with the same lyricism, vividness and dark, tragic wit that have earned the author previous recognition here and in his homeland.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Heart of Redness
This is one of the most beautiful books I have read in years. Mda skillfully evokes the tensions in contemporary South Africa for blacks caught between the tug of Western, technological culture and their identity in long-standing traditions. The story is given added substance by Mda's recounting the history of similar tensions from the nineteenth century, thus creating deep emotions that propel the characters. The story mixes family feuds, spats between the sexes, and sober deliberations about community versus individual choices, all told with a level of humor that underscores rather than undermines the importance of these issues for South Africa today. --William GutowskiThe Madonna of Excelsior
This is an elemental South African story of relationships across the color line, first at the height of apartheid's madness and then during the freedom struggle and the ongoing transition to democracy. As in Heart of Redness (2002), Mda tells the big story through the personal lives of a few intimately connected people. The first chapters are based on a notorious 1970s trial in which whites and blacks in one small town were convicted under the Immorality Act for the crime of miscegenation. The focus is on a black woman, Niki, and her "Coloured" (mixed-race) daughter, Popi, whose white father commits suicide after the public disgrace. Popi has a white half-brother and also a black brother, who grows up to be a guerrilla fighter. In the transition, Popi becomes a city councilor, always ashamed of her body, an outsider to whites and blacks in the community. But all their identities shift with reconciliation and revenge, corruption and nostalgia. Mda writes from the inside with a rare combination of passion and truth that will connect with readers everywhere. Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
The Whale Caller
And it is, so be prepared: Despite the lighthearted and often hilarious antics, this love triangle, like so many others, is tragically unsustainable. Perhaps this is where The Whale Caller defies expectation: If it is a morality play, these are unusually funny, richly developed characters. If it is a quirky, romantic comedy, it's dispensed with a heaping helping of human frailty, tragic behavior and self-destruction. With an offhanded mastery of lyrical language, this gifted storyteller's prose shimmers without extravagance. As if awash in unremitting sun, The Whale Caller begins as a reverie, illuminating the beauty of imperfect love and the thrill of struggling to maintain it. Yet in the end, beyond the whimsy and whales, the deeper, darker concern here is not so much the fragility of love, but the fragility of life itself when one surrenders wholly to the foolish heart. Reviewed by Steve Amick
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
She Plays with the Darkness
Like all Mda's novels, including Heart of Redness (2002), this contemporary story of southern Africa places contemporary politics in the context of family and community, past and present. The setting here is a mountain village in Lesotho, on the South African border. Radisene is close to his beloved sister, Dikosha, until he leaves for the capital city, Maseru, where be becomes a smart ambulance-chaser, so successful in his machinations that he even sends money back to the village to build his mother a mansion. Dikosha refuses to have anything to do with him. In fact, she lives in her own world of magic and music, closely in touch with the dancers in the local cave paintings that were created by the Bushmen long before the Sotho came there and took the land. Mda's blend of magical realism and the cruel farce of national politics reveals the wildness everywhere. At the heart of the story is the mountain community, never idyllic, bursting with jealousy and spite, yet home through drought, snow, and mist. Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Ways of Dying
Writing from the heart of the new South Africa, Mda tells his country's stories through beautifully realized characters whose search for love and connection takes you up close to the black experience, past and present.Ways of Dying is set in the transitional years before the first democratic elections. Toloki has invented his job as professional mourner in a shantytown, and he finds plenty of work. The violence is horrific--by soldiers and police as well as migrant tribal groups and locals--but even after the worst massacre, where children are "necklaced" with burning tires, Toloki finds love, tenderness, and laughter with a woman from his childhood home and they build a shack together in the urban wasteland. Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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