In the United States of Africa

Posted on 07 May 2018 by Abdourahman A. Waberi

In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French speaking African writer Abdourahman A Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the squalor of Europe, to escape poverty and desperation in the prosperous United States of Africa It is in this world that an African doctor on a humanitarian mission to France adopts a child Now a young artist, this girl, Mala ka, travels to the troubled land of her birth in hope of finding her mother and perhaps something of her lost self Her search, at times funny and strange, is also deeply poignant, reminding us at every moment of the turns of fate we call truth. Best Read [ In the United States of Africa ] Author [ Abdourahman A. Waberi ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr Concept 5 stars.Execution 1 star.The idea is pretty straightforward set a novel in a parallel reality where the Global South and North are flipped, where Americans and Japanese and Western Europeans rely on handouts from Haitians and Ethiopians and Vietnamese for subsistence Great lens through which to examine racism and xenophobia Not quite a novel, not quite a collection of essays the book is loosely arranged around the life of Malaika Maya, a white woman adopted as a child by a wealth Concept 5 stars.Execution 1 star.The idea is pretty straightforward set a novel in a parallel reality where the Global South and North are flipped, where Americans and Japanese and Western Europeans rely on handouts from Haitians and Ethiopians and Vietnamese for subsistence Great lens through which to examine racism and xenophobia Not quite a novel, not quite a collection of essays the book is loosely arranged around the life of Malaika Maya, a white woman adopted as a child by a wealthy African doctor and his wife who live in the capi...I love this book and I feel it s somehow not making it s way to the readers who would appreciate it which is a shame When I ordered it based on the synopsis, I was expecting something like a cross between Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables I was excited to see how an African author would imagine an African utopia and how his destitute Europe would accord with the one we know from history.It was quickly brought home to me that wasn t what I would be getting If I can drop a few names Jean I love this book and I feel it s somehow not making it s way to the readers who would appreciate it which is a shame When I ordered it based on the synopsis, I was expecting something like a cross between Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables I was excited to see how an African author would imagine an African utopia and how his destitute Europe would accord with the one we know from history.It was quickly brought home to me that wasn t what I would be getting If I can drop a few names Jeanette Winterson, Italo Calvino, if you like that rather post modern, poetic, not too long kind of stuff, full of cultural allusion and games with texts you may well like this The west Africa reversal isn t meant to feel natural, neither are the characters and their actions I enjoy reading that kind of literature so it got five stars from me.As examples one of the nice things a...Really liked the idea of this, but the writing style was hard to get into.Zun chst mal einige Worte zum Aufbau Das Buch gliedert sich in 4 Abschnitte, die jeweils nochmal in meist recht kurze Kapitel unterteilt sind Diese Kapitel beginnen immer mit einer kurzen Zusammenfassung des folgenden Inhalts.In dem Buch werden verschiedene Personen erw hnt, die einzige, die man jedoch wirklich n her kennen lernt, ist Maya Sie wurde in Frankreich geboren, nach 4 Jahren adoptiert und wuchs somit in Afrika also im Wohlstand auf Es i...In this short novel the roles of Africa and the West Europe USA are reversed Africa plays the part of wealth and empire, and the West is a poverty ridden failure These two leviathans of history, transvestite, share a woman it is her story that we follow Her origins in war ravaged Europe eclipsed after being nurtured in the bosom of fortunate Africa, she returns to the land of her birth to find herself It s all been told before, the tension between civilization and savagery that tears at t In this short novel the roles of Africa and the West Europe USA are reversed Afric...Very interesting speculative alternate history novel where countries of the African continent have been united into one federally run superpower This flips the narrative and puts Europe, the US, Australia, etc into the place of the developing world I learned from a fellow bookseller who spent a year working with an orphanage in Djibouti, where the author was born grew up, that the country isclosely linked to France i.e only French families can adopt children from Djibouti, which makes Very interesting specul...Really good and really hard to read in that the ideas are very challenging personally It is a good and insightful look at the world as it is by looking through a looking glass at a world almost identical to our except for certain geographical specifics The character of Yacuba, the poor Swiss worker, who can only be pitied for coming from a place so tragically d...J ai mis pourtant beaucoup de volont mais ce livre m est tomb des mains L id e de d part l Afrique comme le seul continent prosp re duquel afflue toute la mis re d Europe et d au del tait int ressante, mais l criture est indigeste Le lyrisme y est touffant, le th me n est d clin que sous la forme d un simple n gatif de notre monde actuel On s y ennuie ferme, on se perd dans les r f rences rudites et la lourdeur de la narration, on ne s attache ni l histoire ni au personnageC es J ai mis pourtant b...Le concept du roman est g nial et ne m rite que des loges Bravo Waberi pour a Casque bleus nig riens ou une insalubre favela de Zurich , a, c est une satire de meilleure qualit Pourtant le cot m canique de la narration ne m a point plu. J avais du mal suivre le sujet et les personages..Peut tre c est cause de mon immaturiit lit raire en ce qui concerne de lire en fran ais mais j ta...It s a very compelling concept, and I would certainly read it again History happened somewhat differently, so that in the contemporary world, the United States of Africa is the stable economic superpower, caucasions from Europe and the rest of the west are fleeing poverty and turmoil to it s shores, and the international economic language Ahmharic I ...

English
07 May 2018

Abdourahman A. Waberi