The bulk of my summer reading was devoted to two novels set in Africa. The first, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, was the better book and wonderfully told. The second, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, was also an impressive read.
Half of a Yellow Sun gives an account of several characters just before and during the Nigerian Civil War, the major struggle after Independence in Nigeria. A great deal of care is given to the characters, who range from intellectuals involved in the Biafran movement and their servants to the British lover of one of the sisters at the center of the book. These characters have wonderful and complex lives that are interrupted by war. It was a brutal war that displaced and killed as many as 3 million people; a large number of them died of starvation. And yet, this is not a bleak book. It is a book in which the people adapt, flee, rebuild lives, lose and find one another, submerged in a situation beyond their control. It is a book about people and people’s lives.
The same is true of Cutting for Stone, set primarily in Ethiopia before and during the 1960s, when Emperor Haile Salassie faced opposition first in the form of an internal coup and then in a war for independence of neighboring Eritrea, which had been subsumed into Ethiopia. At the heart of this novel is a household, comprised of two Indian doctors, the orphaned twins they raise, and their servants. They live in a compound serving Missing Hospital (a misspelling of Mission). Verghese is a doctor, and this book is really about medicine more than anything else. Again and again we are drawn in to procedures and treatments and what it means to be a doctor. In addition to the two adoptive parents, both twins go into medicine, one distinguishing himself in his approach to fistula (for this heartbreaking story, I recommend the NOVA documentary, A Walk to Beautiful, which might as well be set in Missing Hospital). Although it takes about 70 pages for the twins to be born, which almost drove me to put down the book in frustration, it is worth sticking with the story. You’re going to love all these people.
One of my favorite books of all time is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Set in absolutely miserable conditions in 1970s India, it is nonetheless a joyful novel that brings us right into the lives of the characters. These books are in the same vein.
Lives in functioning and distinctly non-Western societies interrupted by political conflict. Refugees and others living precariously in places where life can change in an instant. And yet still living fully, connected to place and to those around them in deep and meaningful– and simple ways.
I guess I’m not sure what to say about these two books, except that I’m so glad they exist and are available to me. Never in these books is the political situation the story. Always in these books, the people and how they live are the story. There are no tricks, no surreal moves or fantastic leaps. They are not futuristic or nihilistic (especially not that) or apocalyptic or wry or clever. And yet the pleasure of Verghese telling us about a nine-fingered doctor deftly harvesting an organ is surely a reflection of his connection to his own life experience. And the cool beauty and richness of an evening talking, eating alligator pepper and listening to the radio with Nigerian intellectuals is surely a reflection of Adichie’s own engagement with language and life.
As I read both of these books, the situation in Syria took precedence on the radio, with all its horror and desperation. Because of these books I could imagine people living, and also the crisis for bread. It did not in any way lessen the horror. But I know that there is more there than horror. That is why we must be careful about what we do– because it is not only horror that exists in Syria. And I know there must be something on the other side. I hope there is something good on the other side. And as my community has welcomed Ethiopians and Nigerians and Somalis, I hope we will also welcome those Syrians who might have to find their way so far from their homeland.
You can find me on GoodReads.com, where I have posted reviews of these books and others. Here is where to find my reviews.