Book Description
With accomplished flair, these interlinked stories dance around Caribbean culture, air travel to Europe, teenage study in west London, idealism and independence in Africa, and academic rivalry in Sheffield. Meet Me in Mozambique will introduce Markhamâs wise storytelling voice to many new readers. He is always entertaining â" quick jokes and graceful word-plays enhance his tough-minded and astute interpretations.
âIn one respect or another, all the characters in these stories are wrestling with the same issue. As we get older, the past becomes the only place in which we can feel comfortable. In âA Woman in Her Daughterâs Houseâ, Markham dramatises this theme to heartbreaking effect An elderly woman reflects on her life, particularly the years she spent growing up on the fictitious island of St Caesare. She longs to return there but, debilitated by her condition, is forced to accept that she will have to see out the rest of her days in Britain. All she has left now are her memories . . .
In âThe Mosley Connectionâ, the issue of racism is dealt with more directly. The story begins when Geoffrey Hamm, Oswald Mosleyâs erstwhile sidekick, arrives at a prestigious university to give a talk. A black student, outraged, is determined to have words. While listening to the speech, he rehearses a few questions. Eventually the Q&A session begins, but even though he repeatedly raises his hand, the vexed student is never called. It is a fascinating story, powerfully written, and in keeping with this collection as a whole.â (Scotland on Sunday)
Synopsis
With accomplished flair, these intricately linked stories dance around Caribbean culture, air travel to Europe, teenage study in west London, idealism and independence in Africa, and academic rivalry in Sheffield. It features: witty and inventive stories from a richly stocked poetic mind - including charming family anecdotes from Montserrat, where grandmother, mother and C. J. Harris expect so much of a young student with ambition, a restless world traveller's tales - from the Caribbean to Mozambique - via London and Sheffield, the entwined adventures of an intriguing cast of comic personae: Colin Retford, Pewter Stapleton and Vincente da Firenze, delicate, playful post-colonial reflections - on Oswald Mosley, Kwame Nkrumah, Nasser Hussein...A poet of international reputation, E. A. Markham has been gathering a store of comic pieces to complement his volumes of poetry. This collection will introduce a wise and sparkling storytelling voice to many new readers; it should be filed under humour, as well as short stories and Caribbean literature. Markham is a writer of great vitality - his political, personal and social comment is wry, powerful and always entertaining.
"Meet Me in Mozambique" is a collection of imaginative short pieces, spanning a lifetime of travel and writing. There are many characters with overlapping backgrounds - Pewter Stapleton in Sheffield, C. J. Harris in St Caesare, and Colin Retford in Mozambique. The stories travel between three continents, often via London where the writer spent his teenage years. London is a 1950s world of racism; the 1960s a time of political idealism, with models of black independence tested in Ghana, Nigeria - and Mozambique. Markham's stories meander in comic, self-deprecating fashion between tales of all these people and all these places to create an audacious world of their own.
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