Whispers by Muli wa Kyendo

Whispers is a novellette I stumbled upon in a second hand bookstore, in a town I’d been to only that one time. Going straight to the publication details of the book, I saw it was by a Kenyan author, and as I’m always interested in African writers, I bought it. Besides, who can refuse an interesting book for only 50 cents?

Muli wa Kyendo has apparently written several more books and plays, which I’ll be trying to hunt for in the future. It’s always a pleasure to read a writer’s work which makes you want more.

The Synopsis

Josephine is a young woman trying to make ends meet in Nairobi, where she works as a secretary. When her boss continuously encourages her to “visit” his place and she continuously ignores or refuses, he fires her. Without a job, she must also decide whether she loves Musyoki or Joseph as all her friends, including her best friend Agens, are off getting married.

The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata

The Lake is the second book of Nobel laureate Kawabata that I have read. Unlike the House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories, which I thought to be a remarkable text particularly the title story, The Lake came across as a frustrating work in terms of style.

Briefly, it is the story of a homeless stalker, Gimpei, who follows certain women that he finds posses a certain quality of beauty. What we know of Gimpei is that he was a former school teacher until he stalked one of his students, and that he had committed some ambiguous crime in the past.

Enjoying a Book Twice

A while ago I wrote a post about reading a book twice: was it fun, healthy or just a waste of time?. I began reading “The Devil and Miss Prym” for the second time but switched to another book a few pages into it. I’m not sure why. Later when I finally did get back to reading it, I finished it in a few days. And loved it.

The book is a fable, which deals with the struggle between good and evil. A stranger arrives in an isolated mountain village and he brings with him a devilish offer. I don’t want to tell what the offer is, as I think the surprise of it is what gives the book its strength. I think it would a shame to know this before reading. (It’s one of the reasons I avoid book covers when a friend lends me a book to read). Anyway, the stranger’s instigation throws the townspeople into a moral tailspin and everyone tries to find moral excuses for doing something evil.

The Classics Set to Music

Sometimes when you’re searching for something online you come across something completely different. I can’t even remember what I was looking for when I came across a list of songs that retell a work of literature.

Before I knew it, I’d spend way too much time going through the list. There were a few that I knew. The most famous, I think, was “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush which was a re-telling of Emily Brontë’s novel.

Smut by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett is a prolific writer whose works include plays, screenplays, short stories and novels. Not to mention that he’s also an actor. I’ve read a bit about certain works of his and I’ve heard a lot about them. And I’ve finally read one of his books. I found the book Smut on a ‘bargains’ shelf in a bookstore and it was too tempting to ignore buying it.

The Stories

Smut is a collection of two novella-like short stories: ‘The Greening of Mrs Donaldson’ and ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I have to thank Vanessa for lending me The Road and saying (after I first declined to borrow it) that it’s quite a good book but it’s also one of those books that you either love it or hate it. It’s always a pleasure to be surprised by the quality of a work when reading a writer for the first time and Cormac McCarthy is no different fortunately.

Wandering a Barren Earth

In brief, The Road is a post-apocalyptic story where a boy and his father journey from where ever they are supposed to be towards the south, to the sea. They seldom encounter life and when they do (or think they will) it’s usually someone in a much sorrier state than them or its the ‘bad guys’.

Fact or Fiction?

Courtesy of bible-history.com

Did you know that ancient historians made up the speeches of prominent figures and presented them as if these figures had actually said them?

I find this fascinating considering the lengths we all have to go through in this day and age to make sure we do not commit plagiarism. The following extracts by Trevor Fear taken from The Open University book Reputations gives further insight:

The Beach Cafe & The Voice by Mohammed Mrabet

My first foray into Moroccan literature, incidentally quite by accident, and I’m treated to a wonderful book containing two stories by Mohammed Mrabet. What fascinated me most was that the stories were not written by Mrabet but told by him; in other words the good old tradition of oral narration. Paul Bowles, an acclaimed writer in his own right, translated the taped recordings of Mrabet from Moghrebi (an Arabic dialect) into English.

How much of the exquisite literature is Mrabet’s and how much is Bowles’ is unknown to me. What I do know is that theirs is a dance of eloquence merging story-telling and prose that puts the stories in this book The Beach Café & The Voice on a shelf amongst my high ranking literary delights.