This is one of *those* books. I was in the library, picked it up and read the first page, then had to read the second, the third… I took it home and almost finished it in one sitting.
Before I was even half-way I knew it was going into my top-ten-book-shelf (Kafka’s Metamorphosis had to step down…).
It’s vast, writing about empire and oppression and discord and trauma. It’s full of vignettes of Tsitsi’s life, scenes bursting with emotion, often poignant and sad, yet sardonically dry at the same time.
It’s **so** elegantly written, and feels so easy to read, even though it’s so dense.
Sometimes it feels like a Camus, a masterpiece that despite the complexity feels effortless to read.
Sometimes there are short paragraphs that sum up concepts in a few simple sentences that I have read entire books on.
I already started buying copies to give away, it gives me the same feelings I had with “Ministry for the Future” or “Flowers for Algernon”, books so perspective changing it feels like like they could change the world.
>“Watching the adults around me I developed an intuitive idea that words were power. After adults spoke to each other, things happened: little children were left. My brother spoke to my foster brother and did things. The things they did together made them laugh and looked like fun.
>I realised I was powerless which meant I needed power, which in turn meant I needed words. With words I could do things. I could make good what was no more. Then perhaps I could bind the things that mattered to me with words and not experience their loss. I could beat the nameless things that sharpened the guillotine and came for me after I was tucked into bed.
>I learnt that writing begins much earlier than I was later taught to believe: that writing is no more than telling, beginning with that which you tell yourself; that the word is one method of shaping experience.”
Solid ten out of ten.
by kingpubcrisps