WHITE MUGHALS by William Daltymple (Penguin, 2004)
This long, dense and massively notated historical narrative is set primarily in Hyderabad, India, at the turn of the 19th century, when the British commanded and colonized a strong Indo-Islamic civilization. An infamous, philandering commander, dubbed “The Handsome Colonel,” begets various children, among them two notable British military sons, both strong linguists. One, James Kirkpatrick, falls in love with a local princess, who becomes pregnant and amidst much family scandal and ugly gossip, marries her white, British lover who, himself, converts to Islam. The focus here is vast, wide-ranging and sometimes hard to follow, punctuated as it is with many letters and long descriptions of India and its alluring cultures (6/10).
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
RollnSmoke Reviews: KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST by Adam Hochschild
KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST by Adam Hochschild (Mariner Books, 1999)
Even as the slave trade began in the 15th century, the interior of The Congo remained largely unexplored until the mid-19th century when Leopold II, imperialist and greedy King of Belgium, set his sights on exploiting the region’s rich natural resources – pillaging the land and its people to extract ivory and rubber – and tapping its abundance of free slave labor for his own personal profit at the expense of at least 10 million Congolese lives. Dense but fascinating in scope, gruesome detail and arching explanation and peppered with heroes of moral cause, this is a triumph in historical narrative (8.5/10).
Even as the slave trade began in the 15th century, the interior of The Congo remained largely unexplored until the mid-19th century when Leopold II, imperialist and greedy King of Belgium, set his sights on exploiting the region’s rich natural resources – pillaging the land and its people to extract ivory and rubber – and tapping its abundance of free slave labor for his own personal profit at the expense of at least 10 million Congolese lives. Dense but fascinating in scope, gruesome detail and arching explanation and peppered with heroes of moral cause, this is a triumph in historical narrative (8.5/10).
Sunday, August 7, 2011
RollnSmoke Reviews: PORTRAIT OF AN ADDICT AS A YOUNG MAN by Bill Clegg
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg (Little Brown, 2010).
This debut memoir by an emerging New York literary agent recounts a la punchy, sometimes disjointed vignettes his slow and paranoid spiral into crack addiction. The gritty present tense, of a professional literary agent on the run from a second intervention and at the ugly bottom of his [final] crack binge, alternates with flashback of a strange boyhood toilet panic, college partying antics and a slow evolution of his sexual identity. The writing is strong, the frenetic pace makes for a quick read and the details of descent are compelling, though little is offered in the way of new information about addiction (7.5/10).
This debut memoir by an emerging New York literary agent recounts a la punchy, sometimes disjointed vignettes his slow and paranoid spiral into crack addiction. The gritty present tense, of a professional literary agent on the run from a second intervention and at the ugly bottom of his [final] crack binge, alternates with flashback of a strange boyhood toilet panic, college partying antics and a slow evolution of his sexual identity. The writing is strong, the frenetic pace makes for a quick read and the details of descent are compelling, though little is offered in the way of new information about addiction (7.5/10).
Monday, August 1, 2011
RollnSmoke Reviews: ROOM by Emma Donoghue
Room by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, 2010)
Written from the point of view of a five-year-old boy, this highly acclaimed novel tells the story of a woman held captive for seven years by a kidnapper who gets her pregnant with her beloved son, Jack. Jack’s perspective on the world is skewed as he only knows the 11 x 11 “room” in which they are imprisoned, leaving him with the limited scope of what he understands to be “real,” what’s on TV and what’s “outside.” In order to orchestrate their escape, little Jack is “scave” – scared and brave together – but this strength is the means by which they survive and are able to emerge into the world again (8/10).
Written from the point of view of a five-year-old boy, this highly acclaimed novel tells the story of a woman held captive for seven years by a kidnapper who gets her pregnant with her beloved son, Jack. Jack’s perspective on the world is skewed as he only knows the 11 x 11 “room” in which they are imprisoned, leaving him with the limited scope of what he understands to be “real,” what’s on TV and what’s “outside.” In order to orchestrate their escape, little Jack is “scave” – scared and brave together – but this strength is the means by which they survive and are able to emerge into the world again (8/10).
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... a cold Kalik, anyone?
