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A Guest of Honour
James Bray, an English colonial administrator who was expelled from a central African nation for siding with its black nationalist leaders, is invited back ten years later to join in the country's independence celebrations. As he witnesses the factionalism and violence that erupt as revolutionary ideals are subverted by ambition and greed, Bray is once again forced to choose sides, a choice that becomes both his triumph and his undoing.
501 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 1970
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367 people want to read
About the author
Nadine Gordimer
327 books953 followersNadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist, and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".
Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 12, 2021
This was a difficult one. Its difficulty has nothing to do with a convulsed writing style or form. What makes it dense is the themes it tackles – but the novel does it with great success.
James Bray is a former colonial official who was stationed in a nameless English colony in Africa. His liberal ideals trampled his duty, and he decided to help the leadership of the People’s Independence Party. He makes friends with the two main leaders of the Party, Adamson Mweta and Edward Shinza. He is despised, as a consequence, by the majority of the white community for “pandering” to the “blacks”. But History is on Bray’s side. Despite the fact that he is banished from the country, the colonial rule soon comes to an end, and independence is hard-gained.
Bray returns at the beginning of the book in triumph. Mweta, now President of the country, sees him as a brother. The leadership of the Party respects him greatly. People in the town he used to command revere him as a kind and brave officer. The whites who were left behind still despise him but the narrative isn't very concerned about them. They chose to stay hostages to something that was no longer there. However, Bray soon realises that the independence he dreamed of is far from being a reality. He sees that Mweta is betraying some of the principles they had stood for. He sees that Shinza, whom he greatly admires, was put aside because of his outspokenness and uncomfortable ideas. The struggle between Mweta and Shinza is a classic one: capitalism vs socialism. Foreign investment and big companies vs self-management and small businesses. The questions posed by their conflict aren’t exclusive of African countries: if socialism necessarily follows capitalism then how can socialism be achieved in a society that is barely capitalist, that still heavily relies on the primary sector, where the peasantry is still the majority of the population? Is Edward Shinza just another Lenin, then?
But of course, Mweta isn’t doing a good job as well – that much is clear. It soon becomes evident, to Bray at least, that Mweta has decided to do the bare minimum. To give a good living standard to an educated bureaucratic elite who were disfranchised when the English were in power, and allow foreign investment to take advantage of cheap labour. And that’s it. To keep the order, he will use the police.
Bray is disillusioned with Mweta and sides with Shinza. Things end predictably. The relationship between these three characters is fascinating. There is a quasi-homoerotic feeling to it, especially between Bray and Mweta and Bray and Shinza. One gets the feeling that Bray isn’t only choosing between opposing political ideologies, he is choosing between lovers. The fight for the country’s future is also the fight for Bray’s heart and soul.
This book was written in 1970. The questions it asks were very pertinent then, and remain pertinent now. How can recently formed countries overcome the disasters brought to them by colonialism and segregation? Is there such thing as an African identity? Can there be such thing as a national identity in a Continent that was artificially divided by the whims of European rulers? And what about the white population that were born in Africa? What should their role be?
Nadine Gordimer wrote this book 20 years before the end of apartheid. She wrote about a society that had been under the yoke of racial segregation, and predicted its demise. She created a white man who was a hero together with the black architects of the country’s independence. Perhaps this novel's greatest achievement is how we never feel that Bray is an outsider. He is never treated as one, despite his whiteness. And we feel he belongs there, in the country he helped free. He is tactful enough to understand the situations where is welcomed and the places where he is not. But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that Bray’s exceptional. He was a hero. And in a way, he was not only overcome by circumstances, but by his only idealism. He too became out of place - expendable where before he had belonged - in the land that had been his home.
James Bray is a former colonial official who was stationed in a nameless English colony in Africa. His liberal ideals trampled his duty, and he decided to help the leadership of the People’s Independence Party. He makes friends with the two main leaders of the Party, Adamson Mweta and Edward Shinza. He is despised, as a consequence, by the majority of the white community for “pandering” to the “blacks”. But History is on Bray’s side. Despite the fact that he is banished from the country, the colonial rule soon comes to an end, and independence is hard-gained.
Bray returns at the beginning of the book in triumph. Mweta, now President of the country, sees him as a brother. The leadership of the Party respects him greatly. People in the town he used to command revere him as a kind and brave officer. The whites who were left behind still despise him but the narrative isn't very concerned about them. They chose to stay hostages to something that was no longer there. However, Bray soon realises that the independence he dreamed of is far from being a reality. He sees that Mweta is betraying some of the principles they had stood for. He sees that Shinza, whom he greatly admires, was put aside because of his outspokenness and uncomfortable ideas. The struggle between Mweta and Shinza is a classic one: capitalism vs socialism. Foreign investment and big companies vs self-management and small businesses. The questions posed by their conflict aren’t exclusive of African countries: if socialism necessarily follows capitalism then how can socialism be achieved in a society that is barely capitalist, that still heavily relies on the primary sector, where the peasantry is still the majority of the population? Is Edward Shinza just another Lenin, then?
But of course, Mweta isn’t doing a good job as well – that much is clear. It soon becomes evident, to Bray at least, that Mweta has decided to do the bare minimum. To give a good living standard to an educated bureaucratic elite who were disfranchised when the English were in power, and allow foreign investment to take advantage of cheap labour. And that’s it. To keep the order, he will use the police.
Bray is disillusioned with Mweta and sides with Shinza. Things end predictably. The relationship between these three characters is fascinating. There is a quasi-homoerotic feeling to it, especially between Bray and Mweta and Bray and Shinza. One gets the feeling that Bray isn’t only choosing between opposing political ideologies, he is choosing between lovers. The fight for the country’s future is also the fight for Bray’s heart and soul.
This book was written in 1970. The questions it asks were very pertinent then, and remain pertinent now. How can recently formed countries overcome the disasters brought to them by colonialism and segregation? Is there such thing as an African identity? Can there be such thing as a national identity in a Continent that was artificially divided by the whims of European rulers? And what about the white population that were born in Africa? What should their role be?
Nadine Gordimer wrote this book 20 years before the end of apartheid. She wrote about a society that had been under the yoke of racial segregation, and predicted its demise. She created a white man who was a hero together with the black architects of the country’s independence. Perhaps this novel's greatest achievement is how we never feel that Bray is an outsider. He is never treated as one, despite his whiteness. And we feel he belongs there, in the country he helped free. He is tactful enough to understand the situations where is welcomed and the places where he is not. But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that Bray’s exceptional. He was a hero. And in a way, he was not only overcome by circumstances, but by his only idealism. He too became out of place - expendable where before he had belonged - in the land that had been his home.
July 9, 2016
Last night, at the late hours, as my body wanted to sleep, I pushed on and continued to read this book to its completion. I knew that I slept instead I would wake up disappointed in myself. Those last hundred pages are blistering, sad, catastrophic. Gordimer had a special power in her writing, taking immense political and social events, complex ideas, and condensing them into something that is terribly personal, on a scale that one can appreciate and understand, and tragic. Here she does so carefully, and late in the game. Only in the last pages do you feel fully human in this book. Until then the book swirls in the grand story of a country attempting to make itself and remake itself, on the exploitation of power and the grandiosity of opposition.
Gordimer wasn´t afraid of tackling big ideas. In fact, she reveled in them. And that makes her books prescient regardless of when or where you are reading them. She cares about society, about justice, and humanity, and she observes the world with her uncanny and beautiful wisdom, and then she shows how great and destructive are the flaws in our construction and in those things which we construct. This is not her greatest book, but it is a damned good one if you take the time to let the pacing and the tension develop on its own, which it will do with a slow, meandering ease. The craftsmanship on display here is damned good.
She is one of those great African figures in literature that has led me to determine that the continent that matters most to my literary explorations is Africa.
Gordimer wasn´t afraid of tackling big ideas. In fact, she reveled in them. And that makes her books prescient regardless of when or where you are reading them. She cares about society, about justice, and humanity, and she observes the world with her uncanny and beautiful wisdom, and then she shows how great and destructive are the flaws in our construction and in those things which we construct. This is not her greatest book, but it is a damned good one if you take the time to let the pacing and the tension develop on its own, which it will do with a slow, meandering ease. The craftsmanship on display here is damned good.
She is one of those great African figures in literature that has led me to determine that the continent that matters most to my literary explorations is Africa.
July 26, 2014
Upon learning of Nadine Gordimer's death, I instinctively reached my hand out to the shelf where I keep her books --in alphabetical order; perhaps should be chronological-- and touched on A Guest of Honour, first English edition of 1971, and immediately began to read, to read again, immersing my sorrow at her passing in the richness of her own words. I was not surprised by her death at 90 years of age, yet I did not expect it, did not want it. She was a cultural point of reference to me for more than thirty years and, increasingly as I came of age, a guiding force. Her death brought forth how much she influenced me, both in my own writing style as in --yes, even-- some of the choices I have made in life, those that have made me a participant, instead of an adversary or a bystander, in existential battles where morality is the question. Morality understood as holding firm to one's principles, especially in times when intelligence easily falls into disorder.
Given the fact that it was published more than forty years ago, it can safely be said now that A Guest of Honour is a perceptive political novel that in its day met the challenge of History face on. It is also timeless, some of the drama in it exposed and expertly treated today still playing itself out, unresolved, as humanity is. It is a novel populated by powerful people with powerful ideas, no scoundrels, only human beings in wait for the hour of their ideals to arrive. Her theme was a popular one at the threshold of Independence from colonialism, from Cuba to Africa, the fear of the destruction of revolutionary values once the revolution has been effected; the frustration of those who want the social revolution to be an essential part of the political one, leading to the dilemma of seeing no other course to follow but to revolt against the very revolution they helped bring about. It is a theme as old as History itself, as new as each generation that reaches power. Some of the arguments laid out in this book are playing out again in new societies like Gordimer's own South Africa, where dialectics and emotions fight the ongoing battle against globalisation, market forces, corruption.
I am not a professional reviewer, and I don't like to summarize plots, reduce characters to stylistic robots. Let other readers approach at will, and they will find a cast of exceedingly human types: complicated, erratic, driven by lust as much as by ideals. A varied lot. But I can summarize one thing: why I like it. I like this novel because it forces the reader to take sides between those who want to conform and those who want to change the world. Your choice.
You are not gone from me, Nadine.
Given the fact that it was published more than forty years ago, it can safely be said now that A Guest of Honour is a perceptive political novel that in its day met the challenge of History face on. It is also timeless, some of the drama in it exposed and expertly treated today still playing itself out, unresolved, as humanity is. It is a novel populated by powerful people with powerful ideas, no scoundrels, only human beings in wait for the hour of their ideals to arrive. Her theme was a popular one at the threshold of Independence from colonialism, from Cuba to Africa, the fear of the destruction of revolutionary values once the revolution has been effected; the frustration of those who want the social revolution to be an essential part of the political one, leading to the dilemma of seeing no other course to follow but to revolt against the very revolution they helped bring about. It is a theme as old as History itself, as new as each generation that reaches power. Some of the arguments laid out in this book are playing out again in new societies like Gordimer's own South Africa, where dialectics and emotions fight the ongoing battle against globalisation, market forces, corruption.
I am not a professional reviewer, and I don't like to summarize plots, reduce characters to stylistic robots. Let other readers approach at will, and they will find a cast of exceedingly human types: complicated, erratic, driven by lust as much as by ideals. A varied lot. But I can summarize one thing: why I like it. I like this novel because it forces the reader to take sides between those who want to conform and those who want to change the world. Your choice.
You are not gone from me, Nadine.
December 30, 2019
This was a good way to (almost) end my year's reading. It depicts the political development of a country after achieving its independence, seen through the eyes of a former colonial administrator who was instrumental in helping to achieve this aim.
Although it develops into a 'cold war' book with the political factions pulling in opposite directions - West and East - to aid the countrie's economic situation, I found it raised many other interesting issues, particularly in the conflict between the political idealism of Shinza and the government of Mweta. I was initially sympathetic to the compromises Mweta was making in order to bind the new country together but Shinza's arguments against the West and the economic 'stability' they offered was very compelling. To the poorest, who have always been poor, stability and the status quo is exactly what they don't want.
I can see why some reviewers have a problem with it; it is long, light on action and focuses a lot on political theory, but with the help of excellent writing, I found myself absorbed for a lot of it. It was a great illustration of why Gordimer won her Nobel Prize in 1991 and she has definitely been placed on my to-read list for next year.
Although it develops into a 'cold war' book with the political factions pulling in opposite directions - West and East - to aid the countrie's economic situation, I found it raised many other interesting issues, particularly in the conflict between the political idealism of Shinza and the government of Mweta. I was initially sympathetic to the compromises Mweta was making in order to bind the new country together but Shinza's arguments against the West and the economic 'stability' they offered was very compelling. To the poorest, who have always been poor, stability and the status quo is exactly what they don't want.
I can see why some reviewers have a problem with it; it is long, light on action and focuses a lot on political theory, but with the help of excellent writing, I found myself absorbed for a lot of it. It was a great illustration of why Gordimer won her Nobel Prize in 1991 and she has definitely been placed on my to-read list for next year.
August 7, 2017
Gave up after 170 pages...too much politics not enough story.
December 12, 2015
Unlike many readers, I found this to be a human story first, with the politics secondarily forming the backdrop. This may not have been Gordimer's intent--she may have felt the political truths came first--but I think the novel's strengths are in its portrait of James Bray, a decent man trying to ascertain the right way to react to the post-independence political landscape of a nation he came to love. He was fully three- dimensional and sympathetic, and his erstwhile political allies were completely believable human beings as well. I think The Brothers Karamazov works in a similar way--in that book, Alyosha struggles with religious principles, not political ones, but the book is first and foremost about the human struggle for righteousness, not a religious screed. A Guest of Honour is about the human struggle for political decency, not a political manifesto.
March 11, 2025
Ook deze roman bewijst wat mij betreft weer dat Nadine Gordimer behoort tot de grootste naoorlogse schrijvers. Ik blijf het ongelofelijk vinden dat er dezer dagen nog maar zo weinig aandacht is voor deze Zuid-Afrikaanse Nobelprijswinnaar. Want hoewel ze schrijft over zaken als dekolonisatie en Apartheid, is haar werk verre van gedateerdheid. Haar messcherpe blik op menselijk gedrag, de enorme waarachtigheid van haar beschrijvingen die je het gevoel geeft alsof je er zelf bij bent, de broeierige spanning die je ondanks het niet altijd even hoge tempo toch voortdurend dwingt om verder te lezen: ik neem er mijn hoed voor af.
Toch vind ik A Guest of Honour net niet zo volmaakt als The Conservationist en July’s People. Daar zoomde ze meer in op een kleine cast of characters en was de toon nóg implicieter en gecondenseerder, met een nog grotere spanning en onweerstaanbaardere kracht tot gevolg. Het fijne aan A Guest of Honour is dan weer het panoramische, de bredere blik. Hoe dan ook: groot, groot schrijver, Gordimer.
Toch vind ik A Guest of Honour net niet zo volmaakt als The Conservationist en July’s People. Daar zoomde ze meer in op een kleine cast of characters en was de toon nóg implicieter en gecondenseerder, met een nog grotere spanning en onweerstaanbaardere kracht tot gevolg. Het fijne aan A Guest of Honour is dan weer het panoramische, de bredere blik. Hoe dan ook: groot, groot schrijver, Gordimer.
November 2, 2007
Stopped reading 3/4 of way through. I found this to be too didactic for my liking and the only reason I kept going as far as I did was I felt I would learn something from it, but it wasn't an enjoyable read. If you were studying independence movements in Central Africa I feel it might be a more interesting read but I didn't get attached to any of the characters, it's very long and full of political speech, and a love affair that appears devoid of passion..
In short I was disappointed by this novel as I was by the last Nadime Gordimer that I read: Get a Life. This was written a long time before that one but I feel her work is inconsistent as there were a couple of her books I really enjoyed: My Son's Story and The Pickup and now two I really didn't get much out of.
In short I was disappointed by this novel as I was by the last Nadime Gordimer that I read: Get a Life. This was written a long time before that one but I feel her work is inconsistent as there were a couple of her books I really enjoyed: My Son's Story and The Pickup and now two I really didn't get much out of.
March 19, 2011
The only way to describe reading this novel was that it was a hard slog. Almost academic in character and content.
February 14, 2024
Gordimer knows how to end a novel
July 13, 2015
Nadine Gordimer's The Pick Up is one of my favorite books. This one? Not so much. Dry, long, it would have helped if she had had an editor in the early years. This 500 page book contains a 200 page story.
April 7, 2009
Interesting insight into post colonial Africa
November 2, 2012
This isn't a novel, it's a 500 page treatise on African politics with some sex thrown in. But she's an "important " author, so what do I know?
At least I managed to finish it.
At least I managed to finish it.
September 16, 2022
Confidavo moltissimo in questo libro. Ci ho provato, arrivando fino quasi a pag. 300, ma alla fine ho dovuto rinunciare. E' di una lentezza esasperante, esageratamente politico, manca secondo me una storyline, mentre qui sembra che la storyline sia proprio l'evoluzione politica del paese africano. Non mi è piaciuto nemmeno lo stile narrativo, e mi dispiace molto, perché avevo delle alte aspettative. Tuttavia si vede che Nadine Gordimer sa quello che scrive, che conosce benissimo l'Africa, la sua gente, le sue contraddizioni, ed è forse l'unica cosa che ho apprezzato di questa (difficilissima) lettura. Proverò a leggere ancora qualcos'altro dell'autrice, ma questo libro per me è stato una grande delusione.
August 19, 2023
The "guest" referred to in the title of this, one of Gordimer's early novels, is James Bray, an English colonial administrator, who has been invited back to the African country from which he was expelled 10 years earlier. He has been asked back to help celebrate the country's independence. He had been expelled because it was felt that he was too sympathetic to the country's black nationalist leaders. Now, upon his return, the idealism and ardor for freedom that he had sided with with, have been replaced by greed and lust for power. It is an awakening for which he is unprepared.
January 7, 2021
The best novel I read in 2014. The landscape lives and breathes like a true character, and Gordimer moves capably between the dense political maneuverings in this (unnamed) African country navigating its transition away from British rule and the just as complicated internal emotional state and personal life of her protagonist.
September 1, 2018
في إطار تخيلي, في بلد أفريقي غير محدد
يحل ضيف الشرف جيمس براي الموظف الإداري الذي تم طرده من بلد دولة أفريقية بسبب اصطفافه إلى جانب زعمائها القوميين السود
بعد 10 سنوات يتلقى دعوة للإحتفال بإستقلال ذلك البلد
ثم يجد نفسه مضطرًا للإنحياز إلى أحد أطراف السلطة المتصارعة
مما يكلفه حياته
October 22, 2018
hard going - too much detail
February 14, 2025
Somewhat uneven in pacing but when the anticipated turmoil builds and erupts, the dread that Gordimer illustrates alongside moments of human and natural beauty makes this a worthwhile read.
March 27, 2023
Certainly not "The Conservationist," which is so fabulous. Gordimer is *amazing* on the African landscape - she describes them beautifully. Her trees, to take one example, are so real, so significant. There is a description late in "The Guest of Honour" where she gets into a fig tree and it's just a wonderful bit of writing; almost makes the nearly 500-page slog worthwhile. In another flick of greatness, Gordimer describes a tree etched against the sky at sunset, as "mottled red and black, like the underside of an eyelid," a simile *so* good I can't get it out of my mind. Though my time in central Africa was brief, I found Gordimer's descriptions entirely accurate and convincing. A constant thread in the novel and, for this reader, the real highlight.
Gordimer also deserves credit for fully realizing her imaginary Central African country. But, reading "A Guest of Honour" now in 2022, 52 years after she published the novel, it all seems predictable. The flames, the violence and bloodshed you know is coming, even as the earnest lefties living in her imaginary capital or in the northern province of Gala, seem to not envision.
The main character, Bray, I found unappealing, his "love affair" with Rebecca unconvincing. Much more interesting were the two leaders of the African independence movement - Mweta and Shinza - with whom Bray had sided while a colonial administrator for England. "A Guest of Honour" opens with a blizzard of characters, it seems impossible to keep track of who is who, and while things settle down and become clearer, I had a tough time keeping track of where some characters stood.
It's difficult, if not impossible, for a 21st century American to fathom what it must have been like to endure the racism and contempt black Africans faced under colonial rule. There's a part of me, however, that can sympathize with the hatred and desire for revenge such experience must engender. But history has spoken on this, and the machinations of committed left-wingers have been convicted. The deep problem with "A Guest of Honour" is its politics. Today, the characters' love of Fanon and other high priests of mid-20th century left-wing thought, seems sinister. There is even an astounding bit where one of the characters (I think it's Dando, the British lawyer who has become Mweta's attorney general and whose friendship with Bray goes back years) casually throws aside Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro and others as regrettable blips. As if decades in which in every country, on every continent, in which socialist principles have been put into effect haven't ended in death and terror. It's completely bewildering to me, how such history can continue, unbroken, and never shake the faith of adherents.
Consequently, "A Guest of Honour" fails because Gordimer's political underpinning, which is obviously what she wanted to "matter" in the novel, has been so thoroughly discredited.
Of course, those readers who share this left-wing philosophy will find "A Guest of Honour" endlessly fascinating. For others, I'd reiterate people should definitely read "The Conservationist," which deals with some of the same material in a much more nuanced way and in a way that, to this reader, seems more modern and reasonable.
Gordimer also deserves credit for fully realizing her imaginary Central African country. But, reading "A Guest of Honour" now in 2022, 52 years after she published the novel, it all seems predictable. The flames, the violence and bloodshed you know is coming, even as the earnest lefties living in her imaginary capital or in the northern province of Gala, seem to not envision.
The main character, Bray, I found unappealing, his "love affair" with Rebecca unconvincing. Much more interesting were the two leaders of the African independence movement - Mweta and Shinza - with whom Bray had sided while a colonial administrator for England. "A Guest of Honour" opens with a blizzard of characters, it seems impossible to keep track of who is who, and while things settle down and become clearer, I had a tough time keeping track of where some characters stood.
It's difficult, if not impossible, for a 21st century American to fathom what it must have been like to endure the racism and contempt black Africans faced under colonial rule. There's a part of me, however, that can sympathize with the hatred and desire for revenge such experience must engender. But history has spoken on this, and the machinations of committed left-wingers have been convicted. The deep problem with "A Guest of Honour" is its politics. Today, the characters' love of Fanon and other high priests of mid-20th century left-wing thought, seems sinister. There is even an astounding bit where one of the characters (I think it's Dando, the British lawyer who has become Mweta's attorney general and whose friendship with Bray goes back years) casually throws aside Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro and others as regrettable blips. As if decades in which in every country, on every continent, in which socialist principles have been put into effect haven't ended in death and terror. It's completely bewildering to me, how such history can continue, unbroken, and never shake the faith of adherents.
Consequently, "A Guest of Honour" fails because Gordimer's political underpinning, which is obviously what she wanted to "matter" in the novel, has been so thoroughly discredited.
Of course, those readers who share this left-wing philosophy will find "A Guest of Honour" endlessly fascinating. For others, I'd reiterate people should definitely read "The Conservationist," which deals with some of the same material in a much more nuanced way and in a way that, to this reader, seems more modern and reasonable.
July 15, 2012
Colonel Bray, gebürtiger Engländer, erhält von Präsident Mweta das Angebot zu Unabhängigkeitsfeiern nach Zentralafrika zurückzukehren - dahin, wo er vor vielen Jahren im Dienst des britischen Staates stand und schließlich suspendiert wurde, da er die schwarze Unabhängigkeitsbewegung unterstützte. Ohne Zögern nimmt Bray dieses Angebot an, lässt seine Frau im beschaulichen England zurück und erhält von Mweta eine Stelle als Helfer in Gala, einer Region im Norden des Landes. Es zeigt sich jedoch schnell, dass die Befreiung von der Kolonialmacht nur ein erster Schritt war, und ein Großteil der Arbeit noch ansteht, denn die Wirtschaft muss ausgebaut, die Arbeiter in ihren Forderungen befriedigt und der Konflikt zwischen Schwarz und Weiß bereinigt werden. Ein Spagat, der kaum gelingen kann, und das Land schließlich zu spalten beginnt, Freundschaft wird zu Feindschaft...
In Anbetracht der derzeitigen Lage in Afrika erschien mir das Buch vom Klappentext interessant und gelobt wurde es von der Presse zudem für die "glasklare" Sprache. Insbesondere am Anfang fand ich es jedoch sehr schwer in das Buch hineinzufinden, es gibt eine Unmenge von Namen, Personen, die alle durcheinanderwirbeln (und die Bray natürlich alle bereits kennt). Das bessert sich mit der Zeit, vor allem, als Bray aufs Land zieht, und die Situation beschaulicher wird. Nichtsdestotrotz war es für mich eher schwer, mich in die Lage hineinzuversetzen und die Probleme nachvollziehen zu können, zumal es oft auch sehr politisch zugeht. So gibt es beispielsweise einen knapp 100-seitigen Teil über eine Partei-Konferenz in der Hauptstadt, in dem tatsächlich fast nur Argumente zwischen den politischen Lagern ausgetauscht werden. Die Thematik selbst ist natürlich trotzdem interessant - Hat ein Staat, der aus dieser Situation heraus gegründet wird, überhaupt die Chance, seine Ziele zu verwirklichen oder fällt er am Ende dem Druck und der Vergangenheit zum Opfer?
Man sollte sich auf jeden Fall Zeit nehmen, wenn man dieses Buch lesen möchte, denn anderenfalls legt man es schnell aus der Hand.
In Anbetracht der derzeitigen Lage in Afrika erschien mir das Buch vom Klappentext interessant und gelobt wurde es von der Presse zudem für die "glasklare" Sprache. Insbesondere am Anfang fand ich es jedoch sehr schwer in das Buch hineinzufinden, es gibt eine Unmenge von Namen, Personen, die alle durcheinanderwirbeln (und die Bray natürlich alle bereits kennt). Das bessert sich mit der Zeit, vor allem, als Bray aufs Land zieht, und die Situation beschaulicher wird. Nichtsdestotrotz war es für mich eher schwer, mich in die Lage hineinzuversetzen und die Probleme nachvollziehen zu können, zumal es oft auch sehr politisch zugeht. So gibt es beispielsweise einen knapp 100-seitigen Teil über eine Partei-Konferenz in der Hauptstadt, in dem tatsächlich fast nur Argumente zwischen den politischen Lagern ausgetauscht werden. Die Thematik selbst ist natürlich trotzdem interessant - Hat ein Staat, der aus dieser Situation heraus gegründet wird, überhaupt die Chance, seine Ziele zu verwirklichen oder fällt er am Ende dem Druck und der Vergangenheit zum Opfer?
Man sollte sich auf jeden Fall Zeit nehmen, wenn man dieses Buch lesen möchte, denn anderenfalls legt man es schnell aus der Hand.
April 8, 2017
שעמום חרוץ
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