Book 37 - Country 43 - Sudan

The Last Camel died at Noon by Elizabeth Peters - first published 1991

In 1897 archaeologists AmeliaPeabody and her husband Emerson travel to Sudan with their precocious son Ramses to excavate at Gebel Barkal and Napata.  However their plans change when they have to travel south into the desert in search of an African explorer and his wife who have been missing for 14 years.  After nearly dying of thirst in the desert they are rescued and taken as captives to a 'lost' city still living by ancient laws and customs.  They then have to try and escape.  The beginning and the end are fast paced and exciting but the middle was a bit dull unless you have a particular interest in what life was like in Ancient Nubia.  This novel is like a very sedate version of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It is part of a series of detective novels about Amelia Peabody but I haven't read any of the others.  4/10

27th December 2010

Book 36, Countries 41 & 42 - Ethiopia and Eritrea

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese – first published 2009

This is a great book.  Marion and Shiva Stone are illegitimate conjoined twin boys who are born at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa in 1954.   Their mother is an Indian nun who dies giving birth to them and their father is a British doctor who leaves the hospital on the day they are born.  They are brought up by 2 other doctors at Missing Hospital.    A betrayal splits them apart.  The book is populated with the people who live and work at Missing caring for and treating the poorest people in Addis and achieving remarkable results with very little equipment or money.  The history of the period, which included the removal of the monarchy and its replacement with a Marxist military government and Eritrea’s fight for independence is told well.   My only criticism is that there is too much medical detail in places, particularly about various gynaecological procedures.  9.5/10

14^th December 2010

Book 35, Country 40 - Kenya

The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton – first published 2007

The storyline is original but the plot is a bit thin.  A New York librarian called Fiona travels to Kenya to do some voluntary work on a project to improve literacy in remote villages.  The books are delivered by camel every few weeks, hence the title.  She gets to know the residents of one particular village – Mididima – particularly well but not all of them welcome the arrival of the library as they think it will disrupt their traditional way of life.  Then a couple of books go missing and the project organisers threaten to remove the service from Mididima.  Novels about mobile libraries are very rare – Ian Sansom’s series of books about Israel Armstrong, who drives a mobile library in Northern Ireland are the only other ones I have come across.  5/10

28th November 2010

Book 34, Country 39 - Uganda

Tropical Fish – Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana - first published 2005

This was the only novel set in Uganda that I could find that wasn’t about Idi Amin’s reign of terror.  The story is about a middle class family living in Entebbe in Uganda in the years after the end of the Idi Amin regime.  The chapters are narrated by the 3 daughters of the family: Rosa, Patti and Christine but most of them are narrated by Christine.  Rosa dies of AIDS and Christine eventually moves to Los Angeles.   There is enough detail in the book to be able to imagine what life was like for the family but not so much that the voices of the 3 women are swamped.  6/10

22^nd November 2010

Book 33, Country 38 - Rwanda

Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche – translated from French and first published in English in 2003

I had only recently finished An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina – the true story of Hotel Rwanda, which was excellent but also very harrowing and I wasn’t sure I could face another account of the Rwandan Genocide, even though this one was fictional.  However this novel had something different to offer.    A Canadian documentary maker called Valcourt, who is working in Rwanda in the months before the genocide falls in love with Gentille, who works at the Hotel Mille Collines.  Gentille is a Hutu but looks like a Tutsi. I’d like to say there is a happy ending but there isn’t.  Most of the book is about the run up to the genocide but there are graphic descriptions of massacres.  The book also deals with the subject of AIDS as well.   6/10

20^th November 2010

Book 32, Country 37 - Tanzania

Abela: the Girl who saw Lions by Berlie Doherty – first published 2008

2 stories are told alternately.  Rosa is a mixed race child who lives with her mother in Sheffield.  She never met her Tanzanian father.  Her mother wants to adopt a child but Rosa isn’t sure about this.

9 year old Abela lives in a poverty stricken village in rural Tanzania with her grandmother.  Her mother and sisters have died of AIDS.   Her uncle sends her to England with his girlfriend, pretending that she is his daughter in order to try and gain British citizenship but he gets found out and she ends up in the care of social services. There is eventually a happy ending for Abela when she gets adopted by Rosa’s mother.  The novel, which is aimed at teenagers deals sensitively with the subjects of child trafficking, female circumcision and AIDS.   6/10

16th November 2010

Book 31, Country 36 - Mozambique

Fury in the Fire by Henning Mankell – translated from Swedish and first published in 2009

This is a novel aimed at young adults.  Sofia is a young woman who lives in poverty in a village in Mozambique with her mother.  Her husband Armando works in the city and only comes home at weekends.  She lost her younger sister and both her legs when she stepped on a landmine in the first book in the series – Secrets in the Fire – and her older sister died of AIDS in the second book in the series – Playing with Fire. She is now pregnant with her third child.  Then she discovers that Armando is being unfaithful and has a mistress in the city.  The author, who is the creator of the detective Kurt Wallander, spends half his life in Mozambique. 6/10

14th November 2010