WINTER 2007 READ THIS! — WIZARD OF THE CROW BY NGUGI WA THIONG’O

The Litblog Co-op is pleased to announce its Winter 2007 Read This! Selection: Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Pantheon, 2006). The weeks ahead will include a chat with the author and discussion of the novel by members of the LBC.

We will remind you of the other considered titles over the next two days, and have week-long discussions and posts by LBC members taking up the pros and cons of each title. Wizard of the Crow will be discussed the week of February 5, three weeks away, which you gives you plenty of time to find the book, read it, and join the discussion.

Now we present Carrie Frye, who nominated Wizard of the Crow, as she explains why you should Read This!

Appearances can be deceiving, observes a character midway in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s masterful, biting, and very funny novel, Wizard of the Crow.

Indeed, the line could serve as the motto for the “Free Republic of Aburiria,” the fictional African nation in which the novel is set. The country is under the control of a dictator, a man known simply as the Ruler, whose own political career owes something to an ability to dissemble: “He was first widely known during the colonial times for seeming meek and mild-mannered to every white man with whom he came into contact.”

Suffice it to say, the Ruler is neither meek nor mild-mannered, and Wizard of the Crow takes up at a post-colonial time where, having ascended “the mountaintop of power,” the Ruler presides over a topsy-turvy country where nothing is as it seems, a nation where the police are hard to distinguish from the thieves and crippled beggars can run when necessary.

In Wizard of the Crow, statesmanship looks a lot like stage craft. Rallies in support of the Ruler are choreographed with the care and precision of a large-scale theatrical production. However, the novel, instead of fighting the absurdity, revels in it, with story lines rife with mistaken identity, far-fetched coincidence, and characters in disguise (there is even a fake mustache or two).

This is a big, complex book — some 766 pages of story. All I hope to do here is introduce it, and I look forward to discussing it more fully with my LBC comrades — and with other readers — in a few weeks. I first heard of the novel last fall, from a New Yorker review by John Updike. Since nominating the book, Wizard of the Crow has shown up on numerous “best of the year”-type lists (including The Washington Post’s). Critical notice is wonderful, yet I worry that a book like Wizard of the Crow — a novel that is long, satirical, and set in a foreign nation that is not Ye Old Picturesque England (three strikes! ) — being more admired than read. And that would be a shame, because Wizard of the Crow is a book that deserves a large audience. I urge you to pick it up and read it.

Comments

[Imani]

Oh, I just bought this the other day, how grand! And Demon Theory is at my library though I admit the crazy writing made a wuss out of me and I re-shelved it. I'm hoping the discussion of it here will persuade me to check it out.

[fausto]

The book is on my shelves. No idea when I will get round to reading it - maybe you will make me want to read it very sonn... ;)

[amcorrea]

I just finished it and am so excited that it was selected! Can't wait for discussion to begin...! It is a truly wonderful novel.

[Kevin Holtsberry]

It sounds very interesting but I am afraid the 766 pages will make it very hard for me to tackle the book.

I nevertheless look forward to reading the discussion here.

[Jeff VanderMeer]

Excellent choice! What a great book!

JeffV

[w]

Going to get the book now. Can't wait!

[amcorrea]

Kevin, you might want to take a look at it despite the daunting page count. It was a breeze to read--very enjoyable. Each part is divided into sections and then subsections, so you could read it for only a few minutes at a time and make progress. It's a great yarn (funny that that's the word that comes to mind...)--brilliant on many levels.

[CAAF]

I second Ana María's note on the book's ease of reading (and "yarn" seems a great and appropriate word to use). For me, the first 40 pages or so were the slowest going; I don't mean that as a criticism, the section is just a little disorienting (I think purposefully so). After that first section, though, the book rockets off.

[Lou Oma Durand]

Seven Loves is a world. A world with its own laws of time, but like ours. The words taking me into this world are transparent, I mean they do not call attention to the writer, but just take me there. I think that Valerie Trueblood has done that rare, extraordinary thing of creating a world so real that plot, chronology, even perfectly lush/spare poetic prose become forgotten abstractions. We're simply in it - May's life, but more - ours. Her, and our, experience both accumulcates and diminishes. Everything matters.

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[bose adesanya]

its exciting and very hilarious.was at it till the very last page and am madly in love with ngugi's style of expression.i can see every part of nigeria's military rulership days in it just as any african who have witnessed military rule will see a part of her country in it.

[bose adesanya]

its exciting and very hilarious.was at it till the very last page and am madly in love with ngugi's style of expression.i can see every part of nigeria's military rulership days in it just as any african who have witnessed military rule will see a part of her country in it.