“All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.” We meet Snowman as he wakes up in a strange dystopian future. He sleeps in a tree, but he is not designed to live in this environment. The Crakers are. The crakers with their green eyes and their naked skin run up to Snowman and they […]
What’s in a name?
Pen names are funny things aren’t they? It’s pretty impossible for the real author behind them to stay hidden for long. Either the books become so successful that the lack of personal appearances becomes telling, or someone in the know leaks the story just because they can. Sometimes, authors have pen names so they can publish books outside their own genre with impunity (Barbara Vine and Richard Bachman spring to mind here) and it’s no secret who the real author behind it is. It is […]
Snapping, Iranian Wit
To much of my chagrin, I’m not well read in world literature nor in graphic novels. So coming across Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, I felt like I was killing two birds with one stone. I’ve enjoyed the few graphic novels I’ve read and this one was no different. Much of it is due to Satrapi’s ability to take a story with so many layers and keep it moving forward and organized while adding her own wit and sarcasm to it. I honestly started reading and lost […]
A dark tale of colonialism and liberation in Africa
This is a remarkable book about religion, racism, sexism, feminism, colonialism, capitalism, socialism … and about an amazing family that came to Africa as missionaries and learned truths that had nothing to do with God and everything to do with humanity. The Price family arrives in the then-Belgian Congo of 1959, headed by Southern Baptist Reverend Nathan Price, a wife-abusing, child-abusing, fanatical tyrant and bitter disappointment of a man. He and his captive wife Orleana and his four daughters arrive unwanted in an impoverished Congolese village […]