Kpomassie refreshingly reveals without a trace of romanticisme the widly different world of the Inuits. From espisodes of intense companionship to loneliness, exhalation and revultion, our African traveler describes a frigid landscape populated with a very colorful culture and personalities. Extreemly engaging Tbetbe-Michel Kpomassie's courageous personality charms us and the world he describes.

Excellent book about how a person can be self sufficient in achieving their wildest dreams. A word of caution, this book is not for the squeamish. Some of the scenes described in the book may offend a reader not familiar with the customs of the Far North. However, I thought that the book gave me an excellent fresh look at how people live around the world.

Modern times mean modern means. Our contemporary adventurers always tote an amazing array of technology with them, or they rely on the backup of millions of dollars worth of equipment. Heading off to the stars eventually will involve the work of thousands of people. We always knew where the first balloonists around the world were, even their altitude. The Vikings never had that advantage, nor did the explorers of the Amazon nor the Micronesians as they sailed across the vast Pacific. Here is a story of a real, one-man adventure that started in the 1960s. A teenager in Togo, West Africa, Kpomassie grew up in an African village family. After a close encounter with a python, he was destined to become a priest in the traditional religion. His destiny was changed, though, the day he found a book on Greenland in a Christian bookshop. Utterly fascinated, he determined to travel to the far north to live with the Eskimos himself. This volume is the wonderful story of how he did it. It took eight years of effort to work his way across Africa to France, then ultimately, to Denmark from where he embarked on a ship to Greenland. Most of the book tells of how he lived, worked, hunted, found romance, ate and drank with the denizens of the frozen north, all told with an African perspective. "...the way we were stuffing ourselves with food and swapping stories reminded me so much of Africa..." (p.118) If "white man looks at the natives and pities them" is not your bag, then this is the perfect antidote. Kpomassie blends in so well, he thinks of staying there for the rest of his life, even learns to eat raw whale meat that splintered like ice in his mouth. You will never find another book like this. Buy it !

Fascinating. A young foreigner in Paris, a young foreigner in Camara Laye's African Kingdom. It doesen't get any better. Read these 20 years ago.

George Pope

A beautifully textured, fluid and organic autobiography, Camara Laye offers readers a piece of his life in The Dark Child. As part of the Malinke community in Upper Guinea, Laye captures the layered tradition and culture of his community, deemed, perhaps by most, to be simplistic or primitive compared to today's modern standards. Yet it is exactly from Layes descriptions of the traditions of his community that we can begin to understand the psychology of the author. Each chapter is rich with imagery, and his words smack of sincerity and innocence, bringing about an effortless quality and flow to his work--it is as if we are there with Laye experiencing his many transitions, from boyhood to manhood. His descriptions of the communal lifestyle of his people is remarkable. Laye's works like other modern African authors reveal the realities of colonization, and help readers to appreciate and celebrate indigenous African traditions.

I first got this book in junior high by a family friend but never bothered to read it until I entered high school. Not having anything to read, I took it upon myself to read the book. I found myself intrigued by the author's way of life during colonialism and his upbringing in a village and his graduation from high school. It was sad that one of his classmates died unexpectedly. Wanting to find out some more about this author I looked up a book of African authors. Unfortuately he passed away in 1980. He is a great writer and wished that I had read it soon as it was given to me.

I originally read this play some time ago while studying German in college and it is one of the few works from those years that has "stuck with me". In fact I still have the German language edition that I used at that time.
As other reviewers have said, one of the central themes of this work is the degree of responsibility that scientists have to humanity or something called "the public". Having worked for over twenty years now as a nuclear scientist, I can definitely say that at times the desire for knowledge can override the consideration of all the possible uses of a given technology. The question them becomes, can an idea be "unthought"? This secondary theme of the book is intertwined with the theory of the inevitability of ideas at a given time and place.
The translation by Kirkup is quite good as compared to the original German version that I have. Though the expository style (some very long dialogs) may be a bit daunting at times, stick with it. This play is a philosophical discussion, not a Hollywood action film.

I want all of you to read this play. It is weird butfascinating, surprising and just brilliant. Get to know Germanliterature at one of its best!

Durrenmatt's play provides an excellent and thought-provoking critique on the role of modern science and technology in human affairs. Is science responsible to humanity? If we deem specific knowledge "harmful", how can we hope to prevent its discovery? If the knowledge does exist, how do we prevent its misuse? This is a play that is incredibly relevant in an age plagued with similar issues in genetic engineering and cloning. I'd highly recommend the German translation.

Graywolf Press' Discovery series is always worth reading - this volume is no exception. Certain chapters of this slim volume are memorable for the perfect imagery used to describe life lived in music not words or deeds.

An example - when Marin Marais tells of his return from the boys' choir to his father's shoe shop, the images of smell, the effect of light upon the leather, the callous on a shoemaker's fingers create an absolutely right image of what Marin as a musician wishes to run from.

Another example - when Monsieur de Sainte Colombe commissions a friend to paint a 'reminder' of his late wife's appearance as he plays the lament he wrote upon her death, it is a simple still-life of the work table, the wine flask, the partially eaten sweet that he requests - not a portrait or a ghostly appearance.

The most memorable example - Monsieur de Sainte Colombe teaching Marin Marais music, sounds are the sound of a paint brush painting a still-life, the voices of actresses reciting Racine, the sound of a boy's urine hitting fresh snow...

Such chapters make the book a seductive read. Unfortunately, the characterization of people is not as strong as the characterization of the music. The author never engaged me in the plot, yet the style is one of conventional plot development.

The book is flawed but still a marvelous read - well worth the time required to read this slim volume.

Quignard tries to do with fiction what history cannot: recreate the life of the mysterious and obscure Baroque musician, Sainte Colombe (who's first name is unknown, even), and the relationship he had with his most famous pupil, Marin Marais. The result is the magical if short novel, ALL THE WORLD'S MORNINGS. Quignard, also an expert on Baroque music, brings to life the pain of the reclusive Colombe, who devotes his life to his music and his solitude after the death of his wife, and the fire of Marais, who's arrogance and brilliance ignite Colombe's anger and his daughter's love. Though the translation is sometimes awkward, this is a unique, beautiful, musical, and deeply moving book

I am Enrolled in a class entitled "Film and Revolution." The first movement we are learning about is Dada. This book gives a good understanding of Dada. It also gives examples of Dada art, or anit-art as it it called. This is definitely a must for people wanting to learn of Dada.

"The Meteor" is not one of Dürrenmatt's top books, but it definitely is a milestone in Dürrenmatt corpus. The play shows the Friedrich Dürrenmatt of late 40s - 50s moving into a much compositely integrated theatre theory and performance aspects. Something he repeatedly spoke of in his PROBLEMS OF THE THEATER.

The play deals with the Biblical Lazarus state of mind - that of non-dying. The protagonist Wolfgang Schwitter is in many ways biographical of Dürrenmatt himself as much as Friedrich Korbes of INCIDENT AT TWILIGHT was. A nobel prize winner (which the author never was, but was fashionable of talking about), a controversial writer, an artist who started his life as a painter and found to his horror that he could only draw caricatures and turned to playwriting, Schwitter much like Dürrenmatt later became a fiction writer. The play deals with his wish to die but inability to die. The play is an absolute theatre craftsman's delight. The possibilities that open out for any techie who wants to experiment with lights, sets, props - are enormous. Also a challenge.

The play begins with Schwitter entering the atelier of Nyffenschwander, an impoverished artist who is painting nudes of his wife to eke out living, and is occupying currently the studio that Schwitter occupied when he himself had no money. The couple are surprised. Schwitter is supposedly dead. The papers are full of it. The television and radio are streaming the news. But Schwitter is alive. The rest of the play is a riot. Dürrenmatt's mastery of the absurd, the grotesque and love for the comedy of confrontation and dance of death is at its crescendo. While every character that comes into contact with Schwitter die or is killed or run into misfortune (including his own son who wants Schwitter to die in order to inherit the legacy), Schwitter rants and desperately does a Lear in self-pity, wanting to die. But death would not come to him. In the course of the play, Dürrenmatt does not spare a single institution - Real estate agents, medical estate, Mafia, Politicians, Journalists, Literary critics, Church, Salvation Army, Artists and not the least - the civilisation's most ancient institution - prostitution.

It is ironic and perhaps the capping point in the work that Dürrenmatt subtly answers the charges of the feminists and women critics who had taken cudgels against him for his treatment or the mis-treatment of female characters in his works, by having Schwitter lambast and launch in to a tirade against the monstrosity of the world, and how he himself could empathise with the Madame Frau Nomsen. Alas, to realise that while he was talking, Nomsen is dead. And the Salvation army enters.... I leave the rest to you.

Whoever tries to dissuade you from reading this work - do not pay attention. Read for yourselves and then decide. I guess, for theatre artists - actors, lighting designers, set designers, directors - this is definitely a challenging work of art.

Artistcally, Camara's novel displays many of the weaknesses of a young novelist's first work: too often lush images do not equate character development, enthralling scenes seem to be written for themselves without significantly contributing to the novel's overall construction or character development, and the conclusion seems to surrender to his inability to have a clear (moral or ideological) intention behind the very problematic quest of the hero Clarence. In significant ways, I doubt that Camara had a clearly articulated or organic vision for the novel or the main characters: one increasingly recognizes the colonizer's satiric portrait, but the depictions of the major African figures seem even more dismissively caricatured. Ultimately, this novel sits uncomfortably between a colonized and a nationalist mentality, between the coopted view of a Sekyi and the mature nationalism of Soyinka's great novel "The Interpreters." Granted, from an African point of view, Camara is seeking to explore the very unsavory history of a people's colonization, if not their romance with the colonizer's image, but Achebe does it much more astutely in "Arrow of God," but both pale in comparison to Cheney-Coker's stunning epic "The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar."

This book is a wild trip. The main character is a white French man, living in an unidentified African setting (although the author must have been inspired by his Guinean background), who is totally broke. We don't know anything about his backgrounds, his reasons for being in Africa, or his prior professional occupations. Rejected by the French community, he is bummed. To get out of his misery, he wants to meet a mysterious African king, and apply for a position as advisor at the court. In his quest to find the king, the white man gives up his 'white' identity, and gets in touch with a variety of weird and fascinating characters: an old griot, two annoying boys, a mad village priest. During his journey, 'regular' situations rapidly degenerate into eery hallucinations.

One of the things I especially liked in this breathtaking literary masterpiece was that Camara Laye didn't emphasize human weaknesses of a white oppressor (like Oyono enjoys doing, although I like Oyono a lot); Laye didn't try to denounce Colonialism as a system either, like Cheikh Hamidou Kane or Pramoudya Ananta Toer have done (quite well, of course) - I think that a novel is not the most suited platform to do that: characters quickly tend to become boring academic abstractions rather than interesting people and the literary power of the work suffers. Instead, Laye gradually "forgets" the whiteness of his main character, emphasizing the humanity of all players.

Anyway, Camara Laye's "The radiance of the king" (I read the original French "Le regard du roi" - I can only hope the translation is just as good) is a truly unique book in style and content. Definitely a must-read!