A compelling portrait of an unfamiliar place on the cusp of modernity: a promising new writer.
Debut fiction describing the bloodstained last days of Tibetan chieftains before the Chinese communists took over their lands in 1949.
The tale is set in the Tibetan borderlands during the first half of the 20th century. Now part of Sichuan, the region was then ruled by powerful chieftains who lived like medieval barons. The son of one of them, Chieftain Maiqi, narrates. Commonly perceived to be an idiot because he doesn’t talk much and often looks vacant-eyed, the unnamed narrator is anything but stupid—indeed, the device of having people constantly call him “idiot” ultimately grows strained. Recalling his pampered childhood with slaves in attendance, a Buddhist lama and family historian on call, he details a brutal, colorful world. Each chieftain has an executioner, numerous concubines, and a standing army. There are no cars or electricity, the medicine is traditional and the customs antique. But the years bring dire changes. Chieftain Maiqi becomes extremely rich and powerful when a Chinese official orders him to grow opium; envious of his profits, fellow chieftains steal seeds and plant their own lands entirely with red poppies, but they starve when a bad winter ensues. Only Chieftain Maiqi has planted grain, heeding the advice of his now-teenaged son and saving his people. Respected more as he grows older, the narrator also warns his father and elder brother that they are stalked by assassins bent on avenging the death of kin executed by the chieftain. As the outside world intrudes and the Red army takes over, he ruefully recalls the historian who once told him “history means learning about today and tomorrow from yesterday.” The author, himself an ethnic Tibetan who lives in Sichuan, eschews conventional chronology and epic sweep in favor of an episodic, lyric, and low-key narrative
A compelling portrait of an unfamiliar place on the cusp of modernity: a promising new writer.Pub Date: March 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-11964-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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