When I was a member of my first book group about ten years ago, the first book we read together was Chinua Achebe’s fine African novel Things Fall Apart. Since writing this novel in 1958, Achebe has had a distinguished academic career and was one of the first African writers to awaken the Western conscience to the culturally negative effects of colonialism, exposing the naive attitudes to Africa held by most white Westerners.
In The Education of a British Protected Child we find a collection of essays and transcribed talks given by Achebe covering a wide range of topics from memories of his early life to mature reflections on his work and its impact on readers around the world.
The book is not a difficult read in terms of complexity, the message of the various chapters being quite straightforward. It could however be uncomfortable reading for anyone not familiar with development issues. Achebe challenges most Western attitudes to Africa, and one of the most enlightening messages is that Africa has had cultured and successful kingdoms in previous centuries, the fruits of which were destroyed by colonialism. For example, the King of Congo in the late 15th century took the Western name Dom Afonso I and Achebe reports that Congo was represented in the Vatican by a bishop who addressed the Pope in Latin.
Joseph Conrad’s name occurs again and again in the book, and Achebe blames Conrad for creating powerful negative images of Africa in his book Heart of Darkness and other writings. This book, and a long line of predecessors, “has invented an Africa where nothing good happens or ever happened, an Africa that has not been discovered yet and is waiting for the first European visitor to explore it and explain it and straighten it up”. Achebe goes on to list highly educated Africans from previous centuries, not least Ignatius Sancho, an eighteenth century man of letters painted by Thomas Gainsborough in 1786 and also Frances Williams, a graduate of Cambridge, a poet, and a founder of a school in Jamaica. Continue reading Review: The Education of a British-Protected Child – Chinua Achebe
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Making an Elephant is one of those books which I thoroughly enjoyed from the moment it arrived through the post – a nicely designed and substantial book with plenty of interesting content (including quite a few well-chosen photographs). And from a favourite author, providing considerable insight into the writer’s life, with illustrations and stories aplenty.
Swift writes on a vast range of topic, and rarely fails to please. I first came to his work through Waterland, one of those books which managed to draw me into a wholly believable yet utterly strange landscape (in this case The Fens) which I had never encountered before. Since then I lingered in the Fens while on a business trip to King’s Lynn, a journey which I found myself interpreting through my memories of Waterland.
Then Last Orders came along and quite rightly won the Booker Prize (and was later filmed so effectively with Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and others). Since then I’ve read most of Swift’s books and enjoyed them all so it was difficult to resist this varied collection of pieces from such a wide range of sources.
In Making An Elephant, we find episodes from Swift’s life, illustrated by short articles, portraits of other writers, interviews, poems and essays. It is an ideal book to dip into, but I found myself reading the whole thing over a couple of days, conscious that it is also a book I will enjoy having on my shelves to refer to when thinking about the writing process or just wanting to recall some of the evocative scenes described in it.
Continue reading Review: Making an Elephant – Graham Swift
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It is when reading books like Field Work that you find yourself giving thanks for the large number of independent publishers such as Black Dog Books (and booksellers who stock such titles such as my local Much Ado Books of Alfriston.
I usually enjoy books of essays and this collection, Field Work, from Ronald Blythe was a treat for me. Quite apart from the content (which is excellent) the presentation is of very high quality with a fine painting by John Nash on the cover and a collection of Nash’s black and white illustrations scattered about the book itself. I am someone who usually likes the latest technology, but a book like this only makes me shudder at the thought of devices like the new Sony Reader which was launched this week. I would not want to lose the sheer tactile pleasure of having this volume in my hands.
The topic of most of these essays could be described as “literary rural England”, and anyone who enjoys reading about literary connections will be in their element here.
As a keen walker myself, I enjoyed reading the essay, John Clare and Footpath Walking. Blythe provides many quotations from John Clare about walking but also sets them in the context of the rural life in the 17th century when a walk in the countryside was by no means a solitary affair. Blythe writes that he recently went for a six mile walk and never met a single person – an experience I can relate to from a recent walk across the South Downs on a Monday morning. In Clare’s day however, “there was always somebody up a tree, or under a bush, or just riffling about with a scythe, or hiding away with a sweetheart or a book, or usually just routinely travelling to the workplace”. Blythe calls Clare, “the genius of the footpath” and it was fascinating to read of the routes he followed, either idly wandering about, or systematically aiming for a destination.
Continue reading Review: Field Work – Ronald Blythe
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I first came across Anne Fadiman some years ago via her book of reflections on reading Ex Libris. I enjoyed that little book more than its size would suggest, and when I read a review of At Large and Small I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. I found that it contains a [...]
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When I was a member of my first book group about ten years ago, the first book we read together was Chinua Achebe’s fine African novel Things Fall Apart. Since writing this novel in 1958, Achebe has had a distinguished academic career and was one of the first African writers to awaken the Western conscience to the culturally negative effects of colonialism, exposing the naive attitudes to Africa held by most white Westerners.
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