Customer Reviews

Kahawa

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You don't read adventures. I don't read adventures. Kahawa is an adventure book worth reading. Kahawa is a well-researched, gloriously well written, carefully characterized adventure novel about a plot to steal a train of freshly harvested coffee from 1970s Uganda. 1970s Uganda and Idi Amin, who is prominently featured in the novel. Kahawa is filled with historical (true!) anecdotes about early Africa, and is set in an accurate portrayal of the horror of Amin's brutal Ugandan dictatorship (which to most people today is just a memory). It's main characters are real people -- not the supermen and fearless heroes found in most adventure novels. And best of all, Westlike writes the story with a touch of humor and wit, giving the reader a look at the stark reality of Uganda, Africa, racism, and piracy while at the same time keeping the reader comfortable with the deeds of the main characters, and hopeful that they will be successful

As I remembered the novel, it was the best I ever read. My rating may have been coloured by my living in Liberia 15 years ago when reading the book. Samuel K. Doe was at the time turning our life upside down (I later lived for some years in Tanzania, bordering lake Victoria). The book is totally different from anything else that I have read from Westlake. Did I find it good if I'm searching for it 15 years later?

Understand that this book is a major departure for Westlake, and is darker tham a lot of his other books. This is a good thing, I've read a few of his other books, and while they were ok, Kahawa is simply woderful. By blending some actual figures into the book, Westlake adds realism, which makes it even more gripping. Worth more than 5 stars!

This book is a total departure for Donald Westlake and one for the better. While the plot deals with the theft of a train load of coffee, the book is so far beyond an average hiest story that it is hard to catagorize. The setting, the characters - even the steamy sex scenes - are more than one expects after reading Westlake's other books. This is, in many ways, a serious novel, but at the same time, very entertaining. I had to read it in one long session. It was that gripping.

For Lew Brady and Frank Lanigan, veteran mercenaries of several sides of half a dozen African wars, it was their last chance to make a big score on the Dark Continent. For Baron Chase, a special anti-smuggling adviser to Idi Amin, it was to be his Swiss retirement fund, set up before Amin's inevitable fall from his excesses and brutalities. For Mazar Balim and his son, Asian exiles from Uganda living in Kenya, it was a chance to give Amin a real black eye while making a fortune. It was a mile long train carrying over six million dollars in coffee...one sixth of Uganda's annual production, almost all of it owned personally by Idi Amin and his close cronies...coffee already purchased by Brazil to cover worldwide committments following the disastrous frosts of 1977. But on Sept 12 the trail failed to reach Kampala...it simply disappeared. Humorous and horrific...

I've read all the late great Donald E Westlake wrote under his own name. Kahawa is by far the thickest of his books. It isn't a completely different novel to his other work, as those who have read a range of his books know, Westlake was not just a comic caper writer, although that is what he is best known for. Westlake wrote novels in just about every genre, romance (later when he no longer needed the money he would make fun of that genre with the book Adios Scheherazade : The Secret Life of a Sensuous Man, science fiction eg Anarchaos, a Western (Gangway), hard criminal fiction (The Cutie and of course the Parker novels) under his pen name Richard Stark, psychological masterpiece thrillers eg The Ax high violence novels like Pity Him Afterwards.

Kahawa is a high violence fiction crime caper novel set in the real high violence era of Idi Amin's Uganda. Westlake does use some real people who existed in Africa in the 1970s as characters but the main ones are his own creation and scenes involving the real Africans are fiction but keeping in step with historical records of what those people were like and how they behaved. Keeping with the high graphic nature of the violence, the bedroom relationships are also more graphic than the normal Westlake reader may be used to. There's nothing wrong with either and both are well written (if you get the updated version with an intro by Westlake he explains how all the complaints weren't about the violence but what went on between the sheets). There are scenes such as the description of the room and its smells where people are kept prisoner in complete darkness with no room to move, no toilet facilities and so on which are so well described you can imagine the terror and horror that the people of Uganda had to live under through Amin's rein of terror. Likewise with locals pretending not to see others being beaten and abducted because you don't see anything in Uganda.

Basic plot of Kahawa (which means Coffee) is a robbery from the pockets of Amin. Not just a small one, but one that will strike a blow to Amin's funding, lifestyle and international reputation. The heist is to steal a train load full of Uganda's coffee fresh from being harvested worth six million dollars (not including the train).

I don't think this is Westlake's greatest novel. The start and ending are fast paced but the substantial middle does drag on a little bit, however when the actual caper begins Westlake is at his best.

After reading Westlake's obit in the NYT I went out on kindle to download some of his stuff since I remember reading a couple great caper books of his over the years. This book had a large numberof 5 star ratings so I tried this one!

Having also just watched "Last King of Scotland" I was really up for another look into Amin's Uganda. The caper aspect of stealing an entire coffee train took a back seat to background of the madman and his frightened society that you get in this book. In that respect it was very similar to the terrific "Child 44" and its evocation of Stalinist Russia.

Since I've been reading a wide variety of Westlake books -- the capers, the Dortmunder series and they are all great, but this work along with other stand alone novels like "The Ax" are the ones that stay with me.

Overall, KAHAWA, is an uneven yet action-packed adventure with something for everyone: sex, adventure, a really evil villain, manly heroes and beautiful courageous heroines of all colors. Our mercenary heroes are striking a blow against tyranny, but they aren't looking for the Ark, or the Grail or King Solomon's Mines. They're stealing coffee. But that's what's kinda cool about it.

The premise, that a mixed bag of mercenaries, for profit and for politics, decide to hijack Idi Amin's coffee train, worth six million dollars, is very inventive. Westlake allows his characters to be heroic for monetary reasons and for ideology: Idi Amin's a tyrant and all want to see him go down....and making a buck or two from his downfall will make it all the sweeter.

This one was slow to get going, but once I made it about 20-25% of the way through, the plot picks up and I eagerly zoomed through the rest. In Kahawa, Westlake details the mechanics of a coffee heist (the perps make off with not only the coffee, but also the entire train used to transport it) and imagines what the horrifying regime of Idi Amin must've been like. According to the foreword, this book was extensively researched and the main plot is based on fact, making the entire book seem very real. Kahawa is grittier than other Westlake books I've read, but I did enjoy it immensely. I appreciate him switching the third-person perspective from chapter to chapter, adding a dash of the trademark Westlake humor here and there.

Recommended for history buffs, people who like crime novels and anyone who appreciates great writing.

This was a digital loan from my local library.

One of my all time favorites.
It's such a shame this novel was so overlooked.