An online version of a major newspaper has a book review of a novel set in East Africa. The reviewer summarizes the novel. It is about rich white Africans at risk from conservative Islamists. The main character is a white doctor who goes to her aunt’s home to recuperate. The doctor falls in love with her aunt’s son, a spoiled young man. The aunt holds cocktail parties despite the rising violence. The reviewer likes the writer’s style, but finds the plot a little contrived.
Key Takeaways:
- Book reviewer, Melanie Finn, notes that of all minorities covered in literary fiction, the white tribe of Africa seems to have gathered the most print.
- “The Dhow house,” by Jean McNeil, features a protagonist, Dr. Rebecca Laurelson, working in a field hospital, in East Africa.
- While the actual inhabitants of Dhow house appear shallow and entitled, the hospital workers appear much deeper and conflicted about their white status in a non-white world.
“In Gariseb, at last, we learn the cause of Rebecca’s trauma in a scene so brutal and eloquent that I reread it several times, astonished and awed.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/books/review/the-dhow-house-jean-mcneil.html
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