Eclipse over Lake Tanganyika

Excerpted from Martin Tucker’s Preface to Albert Russo’s novels 'Mixed Blood' and ‘Eclipse over lake Tanganyika’ (both published by Domhan Books in New York). “Albert Russo’s work has many distinctive qualities. 'Mixed Blood' and ‘Eclipse over lake Tanganyika’ are especially distinguished by Russo’s startingly precise grasp of the historic period of mid-twentieth-century Central Africa. In this sense, his work bears twinship to V.S. Naipaul’s (Nobel Prize for Literature) 'A Bend in the River'. Such a time no longer exists because one history has changed and another has happened, and still another is happening under our ticking hours. Like his predecessor Naipaul, Russo has captured the attitudes of his white colonialists, his black politicians of various hues of moderation and extremity, and painted a seemingless timeless portrait of a naive American Peace Corps volunteer. (Perhaps naivity is the one constant in the history of change.) Again, like Naipaul, Russo is compassionate and satiric, but unlike his British counterpart, Russo holds out hope that messages of goodness and idealism and decency remain within hearing, that they remain to be recorded in a different and deeper key in another time. Rooted in a past time, ‘Mixed Blood’ and ‘Eclipse over lake Tanganyika’ have an undeniable relevance to contemporary time.” Critic and professor of English at C. W. Post of Long Island University, as well as poet, Martin Tucker has published over twenty volumes of literary criticism. He is the editor of the prize-winning literary journal ‘Confrontation’, and the author of ‘Africa in Modern Literature’. He has also written a biography of Joseph Conrad and of Sam Shepard, both critically acclaimed, and has contributed to the Encyclopedia of American Literature (A Literary Guild Selection). Setting: The story, based on historical events, is set in the former Rwanda-Urundi, a tiny landlocked territory in Central Africa held under Belgian trusteeship until 1962. The action takes place mainly in Buja, the lovely and seemingly dormant capital overlooking majestic Lake Tanganyika. At the time, the city’s population is about 70,000, comprising Congolese and a minority of Europeans of various origins, as well as Asians and Arabs. Background: The time is just before Independence. The Tutsi, of nilotic origin, have been ruling over the region for the past four centuries. Under their yoke are the Hutu who constitute about 84% of the population and the Twa or pygmies (1%). But

שנה

2000

שפה

English

הוצאה

Domhan Books

מהדורות

2

עמודים

208

ISBN

9781583450574

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata