Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate
Patrick Neate's second novel, , is set in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, in Africa, the UK and the US. It's a homage to jazz, written in its spirit and style; a high velocity, adventurous tale featuring a host of characters from the horn-blowing musician Lick, born into the mean streets of old Louisiana, to a modern-day mixed-race woman called Sylvia, born into a completely white London family, who sets out on a journey to trace her roots in America and comes in for a bit of a surprise. Why Neate didn't make it onto the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list is beyond me. But he deservedly won the Whitbread Best Novel Award. He's streets ahead.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
by Barbara Kingsolver is one of the most gratifying books I have ever, ever read. Replace Conrad's with this book as required reading, please. Set in the Belgian Congo in the 1960s, it follows the misfortunes of a rabid missionary, Nathan Price, who has dragged his wife and four daughters from suburban America to an isolated mission in a Congolese jungle village where they are totally unwelcome and where Price hasn't a clue how to communicate with either the locals or his family, with disastrous consequences. The basic tenet underpinning the novel is serious, the insensitivity of latter-day Westerners into territory they do not understand, but the story, as told through the daughter's voices, is also richly humorous in parts. This one is astonishing. This one makes it into my top ten.
Other enjoyable recent reads include:
All That Blue by Gaston-Paul Effa
by Gaston-Paul Effa, is the most unusual book I've encountered for ages. It defies easy categorisation as it could easily be called a prose poem or a novella. At the age of five, Douo, a Cameroonian boy, is given in (traditional) sacrifice to the local French church by his father. Deprived of contact with his family, he is ensconced in a convent for the rest of his childhood. Aged 15 he is sent to become a monk in a monastery in Paris. Effa's prose is deliciously effervescent, poetic and passionate.
Carver by Marilyn Nelson
As a verse-novelist, this one's right up my street. , a life in poems, is by Marilyn Nelson, a much acclaimed American poet. It’s the life history, told through poetry, of George Washington Carver, the renowned African–American inventor and botanist of the late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth centuries. Through snapshots and voices, Carver's life is told through the most elegant and insightful poetry.
White Turtle by Merlinda Bobis
by Merlinda Bobis is a skilful collection of short stories by this Filipina writer who now lives in Australia. Bobis ploughs deeply into the daily lives of women in the Philippines, challenging misconceptions about this little-known country. Her stories invite comparison with the luxuriant prose of the magic realists of South America.
Kin edited by Karen McCarthy
is a collection of short stories by unpublished Black and Asian women writers in the UK, edited by Karen McCarthy. There's still a need for such culturally-specific anthologies because the playing field ain't level yet, even though people might think it is because there are a couple of star names around these days. My money's on Dona Daley-Clarke, Shiromi Pinto and Diana Evans. Check them out.
Bernardine Evaristo is a poet and novelist. She has published two verse novels, and . Bernardine was recently awarded a NESTA fellowship allowing her to undertake research into the historical presence of Black people in pre-fifteenth-century Europe and the first multicultural societies.
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