The Expedition to the Baobab Tree: A Novel

Author: Stockenstrom, Wilma

Color: Teal/Turquoise green

Number Of Pages: 220

Details: Product Description Learning to survive in the  harsh interior of Southern Africa, a former slave seeks shelter in the hollow of a baobab tree. For the first time since she was a young girl her time is her own, her body is her own, her thoughts are her own. In solitude, she is finally able to reflect on her own existence and its meaning,  bringing her a semblance of inner peace. Scenes from her former life shuttle through her mind: how owner after owner assaulted her, and how each of her babies were taken away as soon as they were weaned, their futures left to her imagination. We are the sole witnesses to her history: her capture as a child, her tortured days in a harbor city on the eastern coast as a servant, her journey with her last owner and protector, her flight, and the kaleidoscopic world of her baobab tree. Wilma Stockenström's profound work of narrative fiction, translated by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, is a rare, haunting exploration of enslavement and freedom. Review "This mini-masterpiece is less a novel than an intimate monologue illuminating the nature of slavery, oppression, womanhood, identity, Africa, and nature itself. . . . 25 years after its introduction to English-speaking audiences, this tale still proves moving and vibrant." --  Publishers Weekly (starred review) “illuminating, in musical description and sharp images. . . This slim book takes a place high in my own pantheon of beautiful novels come to us out of Africa.”  -- Alan Cheuse on NPR's All Things Considered "A meditation on humanity, mortality and time. A challenging, compelling work."  -- Kirkus Reviews "Stockenström’s imaginative interrogation of slavery is the richer for encompassing the appeal of preferment, of pleasurable sex, of gifts, while at the same time fully aware of its boundless pain and grief. Her highly literary language sets up a tension in relation to the lived experience of her first-person narrator, but it’s a measure of the book’s success that we accept this contrast between character and voice. JM Coetzee’s translation from the original Afrikaans is marvellous." -- The Guardian “Seldom does a future Nobel-winning novelist moonlight as a translator, but JM Coetzee shines with his 1980s English version of Afrikaans writer Wilma Stockenstrom's  The Expedition to the Baobab Tree.”  -- The Independent (A Fiction in Translation Best Book of the Year) "This powerful, brief narrative about slavery. . . carries a tremendous lyrical charge. . . Coetzee’s tightly paced, restrained rendering of a complex text gives due weight to every word. It should ensure that Stockenström’s compelling picture of suffering and loss becomes a classic in English as well as Afrikaans." — Times Literary Supplement "The task for the writer aware of fiction’s dangerous routes — and Stockenström and Coetzee are surely two such writers — is to find a way to write literature that resists reproducing harmful fantasies of romantic worlds forever beyond our grasp... Stockenström mounts a brave fictive challenge to utopian fictions that annihilate the present." — Lily Saint, L.A. Review of Books "The life and experiences of the narrator are complex and multifaceted, and the psychology that developed in response to them is no less so.  The Expedition to the Baobab Tree feels more real, and thus more successful, because of this ambivalence. The narrator is a novice when it comes to free thinking and self-analysis, which makes it a joy to observe her in the act, even when the heroic façade falters momentarily." — The Literary Review "[ The Expedition to the Baobab Tree] left me  entranced and devastated. . . At the very least, this slim work (not a novella, as that category seemingly exists just to diminish the importance of short literature of quality)  should be on every postcolonial studies reading list. . . The frequently hallucinatory and fantastical prose-poetry, while inventive, is not merely a linguistic flourish;  it is a political stateme

EAN: 9781935744924

Release Date: 15-04-2014

Languages: english

Item Note: Great shape- pages are unmarked and sharp.Has a remainder mark. Paperback Used - Like New Ships fast! 2014

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding: Paperback