The Cloths of Heaven by Sue Eckstein set in West Africa
Our review now appears on the new TripFiction site here
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 January 2014
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
ZAMBIA - Where there's a will there's a way
The Garden of Burning Sand by Corban Addison set in Lusaka, Zambia
Our review plus author Q & A can now be found on the new TripFiction site here
Sunday, 18 August 2013
All that Jazz set around the world
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan set in Germany and France
This book tells the story of three black jazz musicians who find themselves in Berlin at the beginning of the Second World War. They manage to escape to Paris where they make contact with Louis Armstrong, but their relief is short lived as France declares itself at war too. Our narrator Sid and his childhood friend Chip are American and manage to get visas to return, but the young genius among them ‘the kid’ Hieronymous Falk is a black half German and the friends can’t leave him.
The books jumps back and forward
in time between the 40’s and the 90’s, tantalisingly giving you bits of the
story, but never everything until the end. It has to be one of the most
powerful descriptions of the Paris Occupation I have ever read, as well as
being a story of the ups and downs of friendship, the good natured banter over
the years but also the darker side of jealousy and betrayal. It was very
different to my usual uplifting and lighthearted books set in France, but
certainly something that made me think. With lots of themes running through the
book, jazz music, war, race and friendship it is quite full and complex too.
I will admit that it took me a
while to become comfortable with the way this novel is written. Told through
the voice of Sid it is written in a black slang dialect that didn’t flow in my
head the way English does, but did make for a far more realistic read.
This book is published by
Serpent’s Tail and available in both paperback and ebook. The link to Amazon can
be found by clicking on the book cover.
A terrific thank you from all of us at TripFiction to our Guest Blogger Jacqui Brown who writes on her own blog about her life in France and also reviews novels set in the country.
And following on from the jazz theme we have brought together a few of our favourite novels - so many to choose from - that bring this wonderful musical world and era to life. Just click on the covers to find out more:
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje set in New Orleans
Based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter is an extraordinary recreation of a remarkable musical life and a tragic conclusion. Through a collage of memoirs, interviews, imaginary conversations and monologues, Ondaatje builds a picture of a man who would work by day at a barber shop and by night unleash his talent to wild audiences who had never experienced such playing. But Buddy was also playing the field with two women, and inside his head was a ticking time-bomb which he was unable to stop.
But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer set in USA
Having been absolutely transported to Venice and Varanasi in Geoff Dyer's book Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi we were pleased to find this wonderfully acclaimed novel that really brings the jazz era to life.Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano...In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skilfully evokes the embattled lives of the players who shaped modern jazz. He draws on photos and anecdotes, but music is the driving force of But Beautiful and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.
The Jazz Flower by Vee Williams Garcia set in Washington DC, Paris, NYC
Rosa Johnson Stills grows and blooms into a beautiful mocha-hued jazz singer in 1930s and '40s Washington, D.C. During those years, Rosa challenges her light-skinned grandmother, Lilly, who low rates her dark skin color and her jazz dream. Rosa also fights her rival, socialite Iris Haywood, in an endless effort to possess her first love, Attorney Alan Covington. Because of a long-ago pact their families made, Alan is pledged to Iris. And Iris will never let him go. Eventually, Rosa relocates to New York City to take a singing job at The Blue Phoenix nightclub and to try to forget Alan. In New York, Rosa dates Jackson Parker, a racketeer. But Alan is in her arms whenever he's in New York on business ─ even after he and Iris are married. Parker threatens to kill Rosa if he catches her with another man. Set in the Swing and Bebop eras of jazz music, The Jazz Flower unfolds prejudice, obsession, and murder, as it transports readers from D.C. to New York, to Paris, France, on its way to a riveting conclusion.
Blood Count by Reggie Nadelson set in New York
In New York's Harlem, every street is steeped in history, and the music of jazz legends plays in the memories of its residents. Artie Cohen could feel at home here - if he wasn't on the trail of a killer intent on erasing the past...An elderly Russian woman is found dead in her apartment, and Cohen finds himself in the centre of a violent debate between city developers and an older generation of Harlem tenants. Not to mention the tensions between himself, his old girlfriend, and her new, younger lover. Meanwhile someone in these once-violent streets is intent on hauling Harlem into the twenty-first century, no matter what it takes...
Jazz by Toni Morrison set in Harlem, NYC
Joe Trace - in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband - shoots to death his lover of three months, impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet - who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks - tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Jazz is the story of a triangle of passion, jealousy, murder and redemption, of sex and spirituality, of slavery and liberation, country and city, of being male and female, African American, and above all being human.
Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle set in NYC and Chicago
It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America...Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.
Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate set in NYC, Africa, New Orleans & Chicago
Spanning three continents and two centuries, Twelve Bar Blues is an epic tale of fate, family, friendship and jazz. At its heart is Lick Holden, a young jazz musician, who sets New Orleans on fire with his cornet at the beginning of the last century. But Lick's passion is to find his lost step-sister and that's a journey that leads him to a place he can call 'home'. Meanwhile, at the other end of the century, we find Sylvia, an English prostitute, and Jim, a young drifter. They're in search of Sylvia's past, lost somewhere in the mists of the Louisiana bayou. Patrick Neate has written a story that straddles time and space, love and friendship, roots and pilgrimage and everything between. Poignant and hilarious, it will hook you - like a favourite tune - till the end.
Czechmate: The Spy who Played Jazz by Bill Moody set in Prague
The year is 1968. The liberal reforms of Czechoslovakia's new leader, Alexander Dubcek, have outraged the Kremlin and now, 250,000 Warsaw Pact forces are amassed on the borders. For American intelligence, the situation is worsened when their prime source, Josef Blaha, threatens to cut them off unless one demand is met: a totally safe contact. For CIA veteran, Alan Curtis, jazz musician Gene Williams seems the ideal choice. His invitation to the Prague Jazz festival gives him perfect cover and access to Prague. But Williams is a musician, not a spy and has other ideas that force Curtis to resort to blackmail to get the young musician to accept what Curtis calls a simple pickup and delivery. It starts to go wrong when Williams finds Blaha murdered by the KGB and he's left to unravel the puzzle on his own. What he finds is even more than Curtis bargained for. With the help of Blaha's beautiful granddaughter Lena, Williams races against time to warn Dubcek of the impending invasion and uncover a traitor in the US Embassy.
And All That Madness by Joan Merrill set in NYC
When the New York Jazz Society acquires a fifty-year old letter from Georgia Valentine, questions arise over the legendary vocalist's death. Did she give herself a fatal dose of heroin, as the original investigators ruled, or did someone kill her? And if it was murder, what was the motive? Casey moves her operation from San Francisco to New York to investigate the cold case, questioning Georgia's musician friends, her widower, a drug dealer, a Broadway actress, a mafia boss and the authorities who declared the death a suicide. This quest takes Casey to New York's most venerable jazz clubs, a Harlem nursing home, a mob-owned Italian restaurant, a lesbian bar and One Police Plaza, home of the NYPD. She joins forces with an attractive detective from the Organized Crime unit, and, as the case progresses, so does their relationship. With no shortage of suspects, Casey ultimately uncovers evidence revealing a surprising killer.
A terrific thank you from all of us at TripFiction to our Guest Blogger Jacqui Brown who writes on her own blog about her life in France and also reviews novels set in the country.
And following on from the jazz theme we have brought together a few of our favourite novels - so many to choose from - that bring this wonderful musical world and era to life. Just click on the covers to find out more:
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje set in New Orleans
Based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter is an extraordinary recreation of a remarkable musical life and a tragic conclusion. Through a collage of memoirs, interviews, imaginary conversations and monologues, Ondaatje builds a picture of a man who would work by day at a barber shop and by night unleash his talent to wild audiences who had never experienced such playing. But Buddy was also playing the field with two women, and inside his head was a ticking time-bomb which he was unable to stop.
But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer set in USA
Having been absolutely transported to Venice and Varanasi in Geoff Dyer's book Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi we were pleased to find this wonderfully acclaimed novel that really brings the jazz era to life.Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano...In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skilfully evokes the embattled lives of the players who shaped modern jazz. He draws on photos and anecdotes, but music is the driving force of But Beautiful and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.The Jazz Flower by Vee Williams Garcia set in Washington DC, Paris, NYC
Rosa Johnson Stills grows and blooms into a beautiful mocha-hued jazz singer in 1930s and '40s Washington, D.C. During those years, Rosa challenges her light-skinned grandmother, Lilly, who low rates her dark skin color and her jazz dream. Rosa also fights her rival, socialite Iris Haywood, in an endless effort to possess her first love, Attorney Alan Covington. Because of a long-ago pact their families made, Alan is pledged to Iris. And Iris will never let him go. Eventually, Rosa relocates to New York City to take a singing job at The Blue Phoenix nightclub and to try to forget Alan. In New York, Rosa dates Jackson Parker, a racketeer. But Alan is in her arms whenever he's in New York on business ─ even after he and Iris are married. Parker threatens to kill Rosa if he catches her with another man. Set in the Swing and Bebop eras of jazz music, The Jazz Flower unfolds prejudice, obsession, and murder, as it transports readers from D.C. to New York, to Paris, France, on its way to a riveting conclusion.
Blood Count by Reggie Nadelson set in New YorkIn New York's Harlem, every street is steeped in history, and the music of jazz legends plays in the memories of its residents. Artie Cohen could feel at home here - if he wasn't on the trail of a killer intent on erasing the past...An elderly Russian woman is found dead in her apartment, and Cohen finds himself in the centre of a violent debate between city developers and an older generation of Harlem tenants. Not to mention the tensions between himself, his old girlfriend, and her new, younger lover. Meanwhile someone in these once-violent streets is intent on hauling Harlem into the twenty-first century, no matter what it takes...
Jazz by Toni Morrison set in Harlem, NYC
Joe Trace - in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband - shoots to death his lover of three months, impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet - who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks - tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Jazz is the story of a triangle of passion, jealousy, murder and redemption, of sex and spirituality, of slavery and liberation, country and city, of being male and female, African American, and above all being human.
Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle set in NYC and Chicago
It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America...Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.
Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate set in NYC, Africa, New Orleans & Chicago
Spanning three continents and two centuries, Twelve Bar Blues is an epic tale of fate, family, friendship and jazz. At its heart is Lick Holden, a young jazz musician, who sets New Orleans on fire with his cornet at the beginning of the last century. But Lick's passion is to find his lost step-sister and that's a journey that leads him to a place he can call 'home'. Meanwhile, at the other end of the century, we find Sylvia, an English prostitute, and Jim, a young drifter. They're in search of Sylvia's past, lost somewhere in the mists of the Louisiana bayou. Patrick Neate has written a story that straddles time and space, love and friendship, roots and pilgrimage and everything between. Poignant and hilarious, it will hook you - like a favourite tune - till the end.
Czechmate: The Spy who Played Jazz by Bill Moody set in Prague
The year is 1968. The liberal reforms of Czechoslovakia's new leader, Alexander Dubcek, have outraged the Kremlin and now, 250,000 Warsaw Pact forces are amassed on the borders. For American intelligence, the situation is worsened when their prime source, Josef Blaha, threatens to cut them off unless one demand is met: a totally safe contact. For CIA veteran, Alan Curtis, jazz musician Gene Williams seems the ideal choice. His invitation to the Prague Jazz festival gives him perfect cover and access to Prague. But Williams is a musician, not a spy and has other ideas that force Curtis to resort to blackmail to get the young musician to accept what Curtis calls a simple pickup and delivery. It starts to go wrong when Williams finds Blaha murdered by the KGB and he's left to unravel the puzzle on his own. What he finds is even more than Curtis bargained for. With the help of Blaha's beautiful granddaughter Lena, Williams races against time to warn Dubcek of the impending invasion and uncover a traitor in the US Embassy.And All That Madness by Joan Merrill set in NYC
When the New York Jazz Society acquires a fifty-year old letter from Georgia Valentine, questions arise over the legendary vocalist's death. Did she give herself a fatal dose of heroin, as the original investigators ruled, or did someone kill her? And if it was murder, what was the motive? Casey moves her operation from San Francisco to New York to investigate the cold case, questioning Georgia's musician friends, her widower, a drug dealer, a Broadway actress, a mafia boss and the authorities who declared the death a suicide. This quest takes Casey to New York's most venerable jazz clubs, a Harlem nursing home, a mob-owned Italian restaurant, a lesbian bar and One Police Plaza, home of the NYPD. She joins forces with an attractive detective from the Organized Crime unit, and, as the case progresses, so does their relationship. With no shortage of suspects, Casey ultimately uncovers evidence revealing a surprising killer.
Not a definitive list by any means! Share your favourite novels with a jazz theme in our Comments Box
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
The backpacker book collection - novel suggestions and so much more...
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| The Plain of Jars in Lao - photo courtesy allpointseast.com |
Monday, 15 April 2013
Juju*, guilt and so much more in West Africa. Meet the couple behind the travels....
"West Africa is nobody's idea of a dream holiday destination"
This post + author Q&A is on the new TripFiction website, here
This post + author Q&A is on the new TripFiction website, here
Sunday, 16 December 2012
Our top reads for 2012
Looking back over our (almost) first year of Tripfiction, one of the wonderful things we can say is that we have been introduced to glorious novels that we might never otherwise have encountered.
Here we choose some of the books that have crossed our path this year, and that have really caught our imagination - both because they are evocative of location and offer a great storyline. These are the TripFiction top books of the year!
NO. 1. In the quiet of a New Zealand winter's night, a rescue helicopter is sent to airlift a five-year-old boy with severe internal injuries. He's fallen from the upstairs veranda of an isolated farmhouse, and his condition is critical. At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Tragedy isn't what the McNamara family expected when they moved to New Zealand. (UK release 3rd January, 2013)
Set in Hawke's Bay and Napier, New Zealand
NO.2. A young woman travels from Edinburgh to Peking in the early 20th century,and writes about her experiences in diary form. She is trapped in a loveless marriage to a stiff and conventional man, and then falls in love with a Japanese warrior and pays dearly for that passion. It is then that Mary's real journey begins, as she begins to forge a new life for herself in Tokyo.
Set in Peking, China and Tokyo, Japan
NO.3. Harmattan (from an Arabic word meaning destructive wind ) tells the story of Haoua, a young girl growing up in a remote village in the Republic of Niger. Spirited, independent, and intelligent, Haoua has benefitted from a stable home life and a loving and attentive mother. She finds contentment in her schoolwork, her dreams of becoming a teacher and in writing assiduously to the family in Ireland who act as her aid sponsors. But for her, there are new storm clouds on the horizon. Haoua's mother's illness is much more serious and further advanced than anyone had recognised and her father's plans are turning out to be far more threatening than she could have ever imagined. Approaching her twelfth birthday, Haoua is alone and vulnerable for the very first time in her life.
Set in Niger, Africa
NO.4. Having left her job and boyfriend, thirty-year-old Sandra decides to stay in a Spanish village in order to take stock of her life and find a new direction. She befriends Karin and Fredrik, an elderly Norwegian couple, who provide her with stimulating company and take the place of the grandparents she never had. However, when she meets Julian, a former concentration-camp inmate who has just returned to Europe from Argentina, she discovers that all is not what it seems and finds herself involved in a perilous quest for the truth.
Set in Javea, Spain
NO.5. For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival.
Set in Cambodia
Please add your personal top reads for this year - evocative of location together with a great storyline - in the Comments Box below.
Here we choose some of the books that have crossed our path this year, and that have really caught our imagination - both because they are evocative of location and offer a great storyline. These are the TripFiction top books of the year!
NO. 1. In the quiet of a New Zealand winter's night, a rescue helicopter is sent to airlift a five-year-old boy with severe internal injuries. He's fallen from the upstairs veranda of an isolated farmhouse, and his condition is critical. At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Tragedy isn't what the McNamara family expected when they moved to New Zealand. (UK release 3rd January, 2013)
Set in Hawke's Bay and Napier, New Zealand
NO.2. A young woman travels from Edinburgh to Peking in the early 20th century,and writes about her experiences in diary form. She is trapped in a loveless marriage to a stiff and conventional man, and then falls in love with a Japanese warrior and pays dearly for that passion. It is then that Mary's real journey begins, as she begins to forge a new life for herself in Tokyo.
Set in Peking, China and Tokyo, Japan
NO.3. Harmattan (from an Arabic word meaning destructive wind ) tells the story of Haoua, a young girl growing up in a remote village in the Republic of Niger. Spirited, independent, and intelligent, Haoua has benefitted from a stable home life and a loving and attentive mother. She finds contentment in her schoolwork, her dreams of becoming a teacher and in writing assiduously to the family in Ireland who act as her aid sponsors. But for her, there are new storm clouds on the horizon. Haoua's mother's illness is much more serious and further advanced than anyone had recognised and her father's plans are turning out to be far more threatening than she could have ever imagined. Approaching her twelfth birthday, Haoua is alone and vulnerable for the very first time in her life. Set in Niger, Africa
NO.4. Having left her job and boyfriend, thirty-year-old Sandra decides to stay in a Spanish village in order to take stock of her life and find a new direction. She befriends Karin and Fredrik, an elderly Norwegian couple, who provide her with stimulating company and take the place of the grandparents she never had. However, when she meets Julian, a former concentration-camp inmate who has just returned to Europe from Argentina, she discovers that all is not what it seems and finds herself involved in a perilous quest for the truth.
Set in Javea, Spain
NO.5. For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Set in Cambodia
Please add your personal top reads for this year - evocative of location together with a great storyline - in the Comments Box below.
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