About book The Second Coming Of Mavala Shikongo (2009)
Out in the Namibian veld, where three dry rivers meet at Farm Goas, Larry Kaplanski from Cincinnati shows up at the Native School and humbly presents himself as a volunteer. For his welcome, the priest pronounces him a pagan, and the corrupt principal says he would have preferred cash, but since there doesn't seem to be anyone else willing, assigns Larry to teach English and History.Larry moves into the singles quarters, where the story gives way to his fellow teachers' idiosyncrasies — Obadiah has his afternoon drink in a Datsun marooned in the sand, with both hands on wheel; Pohamba proclaims himself an atheist in the day and screams for God to rescue him in the night; the principal watches a TV with no reception, laughing and changing the channel.They induct Larry into their slow and thirsty rhythm of life, where camaraderie and story-telling are modes of survival. Larry attempts to answer inane questions about Woodrow Wilson and the Roman namesake of Cincinnati. In return, they divulge the stories and legends of the veld — a barren place which they fertilize with stories of war and drought, told around the coffee-fire in the frigid dawn, under a tree during sweltering morning break, or through thin walls in the lonely middle of the night.Peter Orner creates a microcosm of life in modern Namibia, her independence barely one year old and her genocide less than a century past. Through stunning, episodic chapters, rarely longer than a few pages, the narrator reveals the different perspectives, settings, and realities of life at Farm Goas. Based on a year Orner spent teaching in Namibia, this original first novel is suffused with affection for his friends there, making whole a story of many fragmented parts.- McKay McFaddenhttp://www.boldtype.com/issues/sep200...
Sparse but beautiful writing. It took me a moment to get into this book, but once I was won over, I couldn't put it down. How Orner managed to create such complete characterizations with so few words is a mystery to me; yet the people who populate this book feel known to me in a way that I don't even know myself. I quote a NYTimes review that states: "As Orner unspools their quirks through sharp, eccentric dialogue and interior asides, his characters grow distinct without ever becoming Gothic. He hits the right notes and no others.... Orner's thrift only heightens the longing that vibrates throughout the novel." Longing for rain; longing for something new on the horizon of the vast and endlessly arid veld; longing for love or that something that approximates it.
Do You like book The Second Coming Of Mavala Shikongo (2009)?
This book, which my partner got from the library, was surprisingly a good read about nothing. Specifically, it's a kind of Lost in Translation without the mean streak that follows a Jewish volunteer teacher all the way to Namibia where he does nothing much. Subveting both the heroic foreigner and inspirational teacher tropes, this is much closer in spirit to the new movie Chalk, where many of the teachers are just trying to kill time. The students barely register, except two who appear out of nowhere and vanish, child refugees who would otherwise be invisible. There's a nice bored love affair, conducted atop gravestones of the first settlers for maximal symbolism, and some hilarious dialogue. I particularly enjoyed the "Senior Teacher" a curmudgeonly history buff who saves the day by acting as guest speaker for the protagonists barely existing English class. now there's a role model for me.
—Jesse Bacon
Spectacular, magnificent, stunning--all the big-time adjectives you can think up, this book deserves them. It’s a beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking novel—one of those books that, as I was reading it I was thinking yes, yes, this is why I read, this is what I’ve been looking for.I felt weak with joy and sadness and longing reading this book, and I still feel those things right now, just thinking of Obadiah and Auntie and Tomo and Theofilus. Oh, Theofilus! Lowell’s not messing around with those exclamation points—read this book.
—elizabeth
A quiet, quick, well-written, guiltless pleasure. Orner's narrative is upfront about its outsider's perspective. It's a sensitive man's romance with a woman and a village, but his writing respectably avoids the Memoirs-of-a-Geisha-style saccharine orientalism. I was engrossed, but I can see where the fractured story-telling device was leaned on just a bit too heavily - as much as the brevity lends to the tale's texture, the constant breaks in narrative seem to prevent the writing from delving deeper into his characters' psyches. Still, what do you want? Save it for the plane or an afternoon by the pool.
—Isaac
