Cannibal [Hardcover]

Terese Svoboda (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1994

Cannibal is Africa from the inside—inside the head of a woman who fears that the man she loves is CIA, that the film the're supposed to make is his cover, that she might be pregnant. A haunting story of survival, Cannibal lays bare a woman's greatest hungers. Known as Good-for-Nothing by the Africans —unfit for the climate, the work, or frienship, she struggles for recognition, and for her life. What she finds, wandering the savannah for months, are the "blue people", those with AIDS who have been left to die in an abandoned British outpost. But this is only counterpoint to her own predicament. "Trust hasn't enough syllables," she says, regarding her lover walking ahead of her. "He doesn't look at it. I can't not look, but he won't look." In Cannibal, nobody wants to look—the differences are too frightening, the truth too stark, the love too little. A step beyond Heart of Darkness, Cannibal is the virtual reality of exotic paranoia where, when the images break apart, Death grins out.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Winner of the publisher's 1994 Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for emerging writers, this fragmentary, darkly lyrical first novel conjures an Africa charged with menace. Svoboda, a poet and filmmaker who lived for a year in the Sudan, thrusts her nameless young American heroine into a nameless country, where she is filming a documentary with her manipulative, sexually demanding boyfriend, whom she suspects of being a CIA agent. Her other worries include her fear that she is pregnant and her struggle to earn the natives' respect. Feeling like an outsider, "only a woman and just white," she goes by the epithet "Good for Nothing," but by the story's end the natives rechristen her "Daughter of the Nile." Horrific images of animal slaughter and dangers in the bush mingle with a grim encounter with "blue people," victims of AIDS who roam the savannah or wait to die in a deserted British outpost. While Svoboda's stark imagery paints a visceral, powerful portrait of a milieu beset by mistrust and pain, the narrator's voice sometimes goes flat, and some readers may find her minutely self-analytical focus enervating.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The author of three books of poetry (e.g., All Aberration, LJ 12/85), Svoboda fared well when she switched to fiction. This, her first published novel, has won the 1994 Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, one of a series of awards whose recipients have included Toni Morrison and John Updike in other categories. An unnamed woman narrates this story of daily survival in contemporary Africa. Beset by starvation, wild animals, political upheavals, and a harsh climate, she travels with her companion/lover, also unnamed, as they document African life. Many readers will find the narrator's interior monolog daunting as they try to keep up with who's who. But Svoboda deserves praise for this work. All too often American writers depict Africans as the "Other" in fictional works. Svoboda realistically portrays her central character as the "Other," whose ways seem strange to the Africans she encounters. Recommended for most collections.
Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press; 1St Edition edition (December 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814780121
• ISBN-13: 978-0814780121
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,167,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Writing in the voice of God as I did in Tin God didn't seem like much of a stretch after being the eldest of nine children. We lived in a small town in southwest Nebraska with the smell of sage tumbleweeds and cattle feedlots. Although I've lived most of my adult life in NYC, I'm still haunted by home, a place that's now mostly in my head. But in NYC, I can travel without going anywhere. Eight languages are spoken on my block, including Chinese. For me, that's perfect--I can be surrounded by people I know but I can't understand a word they're saying. Although I've never been a pirate in 18th America, this year's Pirate Talk or Mermalade should reveal my interest in research. Even Henry Hudson believed in mermaids! Next year's Bohemian Girl will return to Nebraska, albeit 19th century Nebraska, with a spunky girl who escapes from the Indians.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One woman's journey through Africa., June 12, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Cannibal (Hardcover)

Terese Svoboda's Cannibal can best be described as haunting.Its terse prose is well written. Cannibal tells the story of awoman's trek through Africa; following the man she loves. As their journey unravels she begins to suspect that he is not what he appears to be, and in fact he may be starving her. The story is told from inside the woman's head. It is all reflective dialogue; in this case it works, and keeps the reader's attention. If you are interested in Africa, and like dark psychological discourse in literature; then this book is for you.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for everyone, December 15, 2003

By 

Jack Purcell (Placitas, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cannibal (Hardcover)

As a reader who tries to find merit in every book I trouble myself to read, I believe my efforts were wasted with Cannibal. I spent more time on it than I probably should have, because the book was the winner of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers (whatever that is). In the end, I was forced to conclude that the New York University Press published the work because it hints at feminism, has almost no plot, hints at sympathy for oppressed peoples, describes HIV in some parts of Africa and has many other traits post-Modern English departments of higher education insist have value for budding English scholars. As a reader with a degree in English Literature from a public New York University, I tip my hat to the sentiments. As a reader who prefers books with plot, characterization, some form of interest beyond the inane observations of the author and barely hidden shouts of `I have experience and saw stuff like this', I repudiate it.

On the other hand, I suspect feminists and the minions of social justice might love it. I recommend it without reservation for those.