Books: Latest Readings

I have meant to write down something about my readings for quite a while, but everytime I remembered to do it, I realized that I have not brought the book with me and I could not include some of my favorite quotations. Now this problem is solved, as I have packed away ALL my books, so bringing them anywhere is out of the question.
So, I decided to write down a couple of impressions about the books, with the quotations postponed until better, more stable times.

Eric Orsenna - "Madame Ba". Indeed, a great piece of writing, and, to my shame, one of the very few about Africa on my list. Conceived as a request for a French visa (and following the form's itemized questions), the book is the biography of a strong Malinese woman who has an astounding energy and an acute sense of observation. Her life, from the childhood spent near a mystical mother and a rationalist father, to the old age (she is a grandmother, although she does not feel drained of power), is depicted as to explore both the personal and the general; both the individual and the political and cultural background. A very critical but also loving portrait of a person and of a country.

J. M. Coetzee - "Youth". Although I really like the surgical quality of Coetzee's writing, I felt that "Youth", describing the life of a young computer engineer and poet wanna-be, is simply too dry. It is a novel where nothing happens, where the main character does not evolve, except perhaps to get deeper and deeper into misery, a key word in the text. Trying to escape his family and the feeling of marginality, a young South African emmigrates to London at the beginning of the '60s, but fails to become a poet (his secret ambition) and, despite his feeble attempts at romantic love, ends up disabused and lonely, a small cog in a big machinery he cannot control. Very well done, I thought, the feeling of displacement and isolation of the colonial exile as well as the atmosphere of the work environment in a 1962 IBM programming office.

Khaled Hosseini - "The Kite Runner". Supposedly the first Afghani novel accessible in English, "The Kite Runner" has very high but also very low points. On the positive side, the portait of Kabul before the Russian invasion, as well as during the Taliban regime, feels very real and moving. One can smell the food, see the houses, hear the conversations, get excited about the children's games, feel the fear of locals in face of the acts of random violence. The main characters are also made of flesh and bones, and are far from being perfect incarnations of generalized human types.
However, the plot itself, about a young Afghani who recalls his childhood and his betrayal of his best friend from an exile position in the US, has many artificial twists and turns and seems forced in its quest for a moral ending. Although the adventures grab you and keep you interested, some of the symbolism is simply over the top. Making exception of these moralizing attempts, the book is very readable and opens up a universe as of yet less explored.