Spoiler alert: the New Yorker review gave away the punchline, which is a pity because not many people, I suspect, know the back story, but also the real irony here, in a glorious pathos on which the story pivots, is tossed off in a single short sentence just before the final denouement. The book was short listed for the Booker Prize and you might think not so dissimilar to the winner The Promise, but perhaps less in tune with middle class sensibilities, not apartheid in South Africa, but discriminations from less remarked Somalia. We have disembarked from East Africa at the traders and military front door of colonial empire, Cardiff. This is the sequel to her admirable first book Black Mamba Boy, not exactly but atmospherically. Three drinks, not one, the colour of the floor a hint at divisions. “The noise settles as milkshakes and colas click against Irish coffees, and chairs scrape against the black and white tiled floor.” I let the opening sentence here run longer than usual because the quality of Nadifa’s prose is so rewarding. The announcer’s voice crackles from the wireless and winds around the rapt patrons of Berlin’s Milk Bar, as sinuously as the fog curls around the mournful street lamps, their wan glow barely illuminating the cobblestones.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |