The Zanzibar Chest
(Aidan Hartley)
To all those interested in Africa! If you are fed up with romantic atmosphere of Out of Africa or are afraid to travel into the Heart of darkness, here is a book for you. Aidan Hartley?s The Zanzibar Chest is a rare opportunity to learn Africa as it really is. Written in a simple but remarkably strong language, the book presents true pictures of politics and people relations on the contemporary continent. It is also a story taking us to the times when the British Empire was solid and ruled most of the world.
Firstly The Zanzibar Chest is a memoir of one of the best journalist covering Africa. Hartley, born ?between the snowy sugarloaf of Kilimanjaro and the sharp, black mass of Meru?, like hardly any one else understands the complexity of the continent. His raw talent is especially exposed in the episode titled ?The Sound of Freedom in the Air?, concerning the fall of Somalia in the 1990s. A scary but true description of chaotic attacks of the American soldiers, local warlords brutality and primal rage of a Mogadishu rabble mistreating corpses of dead journalists moves with its intense atmosphere and tragedy. Since the first letters, the reader eyewitnesses the events, events that stay in memory days after laying off the book.
Paralleling to Hartley?s story, there is a story of Peter Davey?s, a true lover of Africa. Page after page we discover how this British officer fall in love with an Arab tradition and culture, and finally ? with an Arab woman. Although one cannot expect a Hollywood happy ending, passionately written steals one?s heart and soul for a long time.
Newspapers labelled the book as haunting, necessary and even a masterpiece. Aidan Hartley?s The Zanzibar Chest deserves every single bit of success it gets.
Resumos Relacionados
- New News Out Of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance (w.e.b. Du Bois Institute)
- New News Out Of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance (w.e.b. Du Bois Institute)
- In The Heart Of The Shadows
- In The Heart Of The Shadows
- The Zebra Killings
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