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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Heat and wild color, fear and defeat tangle together in these 14 stories until the reader is stunned by the soaring images and their terrifying implications for the people of East Africa, where Thomas (Antonia Saw the Oryx First lived for 12 years, absorbing every nuance, it seems, of land and language. She writes in many different voices, the title story a brassy evocation of a white couple living in a squalid Dar-es-Salaam slum, cuckolding each other, dreaming of American snow and knowing that it will never wash their marriage clean. Utterly different is Gwendolyn of "Summer Opportunity," a black girl given the chance to improve her career possibilities by spending a summer in Lagos. Before she leaves, she buys a pair of glitzy platform sandals, "whore shoes," her mother accuses, but Gwendolyn doesn't plan to ruin her career by consorting with Africans. The shoes are sacrificed, though, along with her hopes, to the wife of the Nigerian she can't help sleeping with. Desperation blackens all these tales, but none more formidably than "Why the Sky Is So Far Away," a glimpse of Peace Corps volunteers during an African drought. Parched and sick with malaria, they set out to vaccinate the natives against smallpox and pick up an old man who tells them about a people who hack away the sky, eat it, spit it out as excrement, robbing the world of rain. This is a collection of enormous emotional impact.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
"Some fine writer . . . Waugh rewired for the 80s."-Raymond Sokolov, The Wall Street Journal
"She has a gift."-Los Angeles Times
"Impressive."-Chicago Tribune
"Her stories will do more than a score of Newsweek magazine cover stories to explain Africa and its relationship with the 20th century."-Houston Post
"Very often funny, very often wise."-The Plain Dealer
"Compassionate and haunting."-The Baltimore Sun
In this collection of fourteen short stories, originally published in 1987, acclaimed writer Maria Thomas vividly portrays the experiences of American expatriates in Africa, as well as the lives of ordinary Africans, from many points of view.
See all Editorial Reviews
Heat and wild color, fear and defeat tangle together in these 14 stories until the reader is stunned by the soaring images and their terrifying implications for the people of East Africa, where Thomas (Antonia Saw the Oryx First lived for 12 years, absorbing every nuance, it seems, of land and language. She writes in many different voices, the title story a brassy evocation of a white couple living in a squalid Dar-es-Salaam slum, cuckolding each other, dreaming of American snow and knowing that it will never wash their marriage clean. Utterly different is Gwendolyn of "Summer Opportunity," a black girl given the chance to improve her career possibilities by spending a summer in Lagos. Before she leaves, she buys a pair of glitzy platform sandals, "whore shoes," her mother accuses, but Gwendolyn doesn't plan to ruin her career by consorting with Africans. The shoes are sacrificed, though, along with her hopes, to the wife of the Nigerian she can't help sleeping with. Desperation blackens all these tales, but none more formidably than "Why the Sky Is So Far Away," a glimpse of Peace Corps volunteers during an African drought. Parched and sick with malaria, they set out to vaccinate the natives against smallpox and pick up an old man who tells them about a people who hack away the sky, eat it, spit it out as excrement, robbing the world of rain. This is a collection of enormous emotional impact.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
"Some fine writer . . . Waugh rewired for the 80s."-Raymond Sokolov, The Wall Street Journal
"She has a gift."-Los Angeles Times
"Impressive."-Chicago Tribune
"Her stories will do more than a score of Newsweek magazine cover stories to explain Africa and its relationship with the 20th century."-Houston Post
"Very often funny, very often wise."-The Plain Dealer
"Compassionate and haunting."-The Baltimore Sun
In this collection of fourteen short stories, originally published in 1987, acclaimed writer Maria Thomas vividly portrays the experiences of American expatriates in Africa, as well as the lives of ordinary Africans, from many points of view.
See all Editorial Reviews
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