Allan Stratton's Blog, page 4

THE HEAT IS ON IN SAIGON

Whee! This is the start of a series that'll take us from Ho Chi Minh City (still known as Saigon to most people who live there) up to Hanoi and over to the 11th century temples of Angor Watt, Cambodia. Watch out for the mopeds.

There's not a heckuva lot to see in Saigon in the sense of historic buildings -- yeah, yeah, the old Presidential Palace, the Opera House, blah blah blah. BUT there's a heckuva lot to feel and experience. Starting with the Wonderful World of Mopeds, pictured above. BT...

CHANDA'S SECRETS: OFFICIAL CANNES FILM FESTIVAL SELECTION

I interrupt the blog posts on my trip to Vietnam/Cambodia to bring you some truly exciting news. I am, like, dancing on air. The film version of CHANDA'S SECRETS that I blogged about all December from the set a few hours north of Johannesburg is an OFFICIAL SELECTION OF THE 2010 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL!!!!!!!!! (Sorry for screaming, but hey.:)) Oh -- the lead photo is of me with the kids who play Chanda's brother and sister, Soly and Iris.

The film is running in the Un Certain Regard section at t...

FUN AT THE VIETNAM BOOK FAIR!

Well, if you're going to visit a foreign country, what better time to go than during its national book fair? Especially if one's book is at the fair and one's publisher is the gracious and generous Mr. Ton Quang Toan, or simply Ton as he likes to be called. This is us in the crowd outside the entrance gate in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) -- the fair is a really fun, open-air affair.

As soon as he heard I was coming Ton did miracles, arranging for the most impressive welcome I've ever received at ...

HOW MY PURIFICATION RITUAL WAS FICTIONALIZED IN "CHANDA'S SECRETS"

Last post, I included a chapter from my comic adult novel The Phoenix Lottery that demonstrated how life interacts with imagination in the creation of fiction. (My actual experiences with a santerían purification ritual outside Guardalavaca, and at the duPont mansion in Varadero, had been posted, with pix, in the weeks prior.)

(BTW, if you'd like to buy a copy of the Phoenix Lottery, just post a comment and I'll see about getting you one. :))

I used that same real-life ritual to different effe...

MY SANTERÍAN RITUAL IN FICTION

Hi there,

Over the last couple of weeks, I've written and showed pix from Cuba: of Varadero, the duPont estate, and my experience with santería. These have been mixed in with two excerpts from my first novel, The Phoenix Lottery. In those you read about our hero Junior (a literary version of me) as a troubled child in prerevolution Cuba. In this chapter, he's an adult returned to Varadero, now, after the revolution. I thought you might like to see how all the interests and experiences I talke...

CUBA: MY PURIFICATION RITUAL

So anyway... the santerían purification ritual. The photo was taken by the cab driver who then left us.

I was in the shed with Isabel and her sister-in-law. It was night. Pretty quiet except for the occasional dog bark. Isabel channels an early slave by the name Jose who speaks a mixture of old French, old Spanish and Yoruban. (I had to take Isabel's word for it.) Neither Isabel nor her sister-in-law speak those languages either, BTW, but the sister-in-law translates. It's a bit like Pentacost...

CUBA: SANTERÍA

Hi there,
Today begins a couple of posts about santería and the purification ritual I had with a santera in the countryside outside Guardalavaca in north-eastern Cuba. This is a statue to Babablú-Ayé, otherwise known as Santo Lazaro or Saint Lazarus. I took it inside the shed where Isabel performs her rituals -- with permission. I was alone and it was night, on my second of many visits to Isabel's. She's really quite remarkable, my window on the character of Sara in my first novel, The Phoenix...

CUBA: OUTSIDE VARADERO

My first novel, the Phoenix Lottery, uses lots of other references to Varadero, besides the duPont mansion featured in the last two posts. Above is the lobby of the Melia Varadero. (Go back two posts to see the duPont mansion in the distance with a bunch of beach in the foreground. That shot was taken twenty years ago from the spot where this hotel would be built.)







Above is Playa Corales, where I snorkelled for the first time -- a bare-bones beach about a twenty minute taxi or moped outs...

CUBA: IMAGINING VARADERO

As mentioned in my last post, Varadero features heavily in my first novel The Phoenix Lottery -- especially the duPont mansion. As an experiment, I'm posting the first chapter here. For photos of the setting you're reading about, check my last post. (Next post, some things to see off the beach. :)

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THE REUNION (From THE PHOENIX LOTTERY)

Varadero. December 15, 1958. Two weeks before the revolution triumphs.

Edgar and Kitty, along with four-year-old Junior and private secretary Emily Pri...

CUBA: THE DUPONT MANSION

When I first went to Varadero, Cuba, in 1990, I was blown away by its twenty kilometres (1.2 miles) of almost unbroken white coral sand beach. At that time the last hotel, the International, was at about the halfway point. Then one took a moped out a dirt path which ended up at a golf course which is part of the old duPont estate. After that, the mansion and more sand. Now hotels extend the full length of the peninsula. However, unlike most major beach destinations, with the exception of the ...