Irene Sabatini's Blog - Posts Tagged "bulawayo"
The Telling of Stories
One of my favourite books is The Blue Taxi by N.S. Köenings (Little, Brown and Company, 2006).
I read this novel which is set in an East African country when it was first published. I was struck by the richness of the characterisation and of the beautiful evocation of a time and place.
The blurb at the back sums up the story very well: '...writing with a delight in language that is utterly her own, N.S. Koenings depicts an African city brimming with life and full of contradictions, just like the people who inhabit it. The Blue Taxi is a dazzling tale of love, courage, and what happens when lives and fates collide.'
This story - its heart being the love affair between a married Belgian woman, Sarie Turner, and a local widower, Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee- showed me that it is possible for an outsider, the author, to capture the essence of a person and persons of a different culture (to their own) in a way that rings true and vibrates with authenticity.
I think of this as a kind of grace - to be able to inhabit the body and soul of the other, to make them breathe - the magic of what good fiction can do.
I'm very grateful to have read this book because I'm certain that its truth seeped into me giving me some of the grace I would need to allow Ian McKenzie to be a human being and not a caricature or a parody or even an urban legend!
I also just love, love its jacket art!
www.irenesabatini.com
I read this novel which is set in an East African country when it was first published. I was struck by the richness of the characterisation and of the beautiful evocation of a time and place.
The blurb at the back sums up the story very well: '...writing with a delight in language that is utterly her own, N.S. Koenings depicts an African city brimming with life and full of contradictions, just like the people who inhabit it. The Blue Taxi is a dazzling tale of love, courage, and what happens when lives and fates collide.'
This story - its heart being the love affair between a married Belgian woman, Sarie Turner, and a local widower, Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee- showed me that it is possible for an outsider, the author, to capture the essence of a person and persons of a different culture (to their own) in a way that rings true and vibrates with authenticity.
I think of this as a kind of grace - to be able to inhabit the body and soul of the other, to make them breathe - the magic of what good fiction can do.
I'm very grateful to have read this book because I'm certain that its truth seeped into me giving me some of the grace I would need to allow Ian McKenzie to be a human being and not a caricature or a parody or even an urban legend!
I also just love, love its jacket art!
www.irenesabatini.com
Magic !
I was walking along a bridge when I stopped and looked over the railing. The usual swans were there gliding in their effortless way on the water, but interspersed among them were these grey birds with necks as long and curved as the swans; these creatures however seemed ungainly in the water, gawky, and not so pleasing to the eye. I looked and looked at them and then suddenly I smacked my forehead, of course, here they were, The Ugly Ducklings! Here they were before they became creatures of fabled beauty and elegance.
And then suddenly in the exact same spot where I was standing there was a boy, six or seven years old, standing with his father, looking out at the birds. I could feel their breath on me. I could feel the boy's excited quiver, his hand squeezing his father's, his feet on tip toes. I sat down on a bench and looking out at them I wrote a bit more of their story, the story of the book I'm working on now.
This is what I mean when I keep telling people about the magic of writing: all of a sudden your characters are real. They are people. They breathe. They walk with you. You see them. It happened with The Boy Next Door. Later, the boy and his father will walk all the way up to the old town, along its wonderful cobbled streets and they will find the longest bench in the world and they will sit there, together. I will wait for them...
www.irenesabatini.com
And then suddenly in the exact same spot where I was standing there was a boy, six or seven years old, standing with his father, looking out at the birds. I could feel their breath on me. I could feel the boy's excited quiver, his hand squeezing his father's, his feet on tip toes. I sat down on a bench and looking out at them I wrote a bit more of their story, the story of the book I'm working on now.
This is what I mean when I keep telling people about the magic of writing: all of a sudden your characters are real. They are people. They breathe. They walk with you. You see them. It happened with The Boy Next Door. Later, the boy and his father will walk all the way up to the old town, along its wonderful cobbled streets and they will find the longest bench in the world and they will sit there, together. I will wait for them...
www.irenesabatini.com
Book Reading and Signing - Geneva, Switzerland
I had a wonderful evening at Off the Shelf Bookshop in Geneva, this my very first reading and signing. I love this place with its wooden floors and bookcases; it is large enough to have a good variety of carefully selected books and small enough for the book-lover to feel right at home in.
I was very shocked and humbled by the number of people who came. It was a very emotional experience seeing people holding my book, for the very first time. Lindiwe and Ian are now public property! What will be made of them, of their story? I feel a bit like a mother hen.
The signing was awkward initially for me...my author signature, well, to quote someone in the bookshop, was just too plain, it needed flourish! By the end of the evening I do believe it had acquired some loops and twirls!
I read the first chapter with a thumping heart and here's the thing...as I read I kept thinking, they're listening to this story, my story, now theirs. Magic!
The conversation we had afterwards was another emotional rite of passage...the questions that were asked about the characters and the story brought me right back to over two years ago when a phone conversation lit the spark for the story and the tingling excitement of my hands on the keyboard when I wrote those very first words.
Pictures and video of the evening can be found on my website
[image error]
www.irenesabatini.com
I was very shocked and humbled by the number of people who came. It was a very emotional experience seeing people holding my book, for the very first time. Lindiwe and Ian are now public property! What will be made of them, of their story? I feel a bit like a mother hen.
The signing was awkward initially for me...my author signature, well, to quote someone in the bookshop, was just too plain, it needed flourish! By the end of the evening I do believe it had acquired some loops and twirls!
I read the first chapter with a thumping heart and here's the thing...as I read I kept thinking, they're listening to this story, my story, now theirs. Magic!
The conversation we had afterwards was another emotional rite of passage...the questions that were asked about the characters and the story brought me right back to over two years ago when a phone conversation lit the spark for the story and the tingling excitement of my hands on the keyboard when I wrote those very first words.
Pictures and video of the evening can be found on my website
[image error]
www.irenesabatini.com
New York Times
September 17, 2009
The Boy Next Door made it to the 'Newly Released' write up by Amy Virshup. There's a link to the article on my website
www.irenesabatini.com.
I think that this line encapsulates the novel very well: 'Their shared status as outsiders brings them together in this novel about love, family and what it means to be African'. This is Lindiwe and Ian's story put in a (lovely) nutshell. Needless to say, I got some friends to deliver a hard copy!
www.irenesabatini.com
The Boy Next Door made it to the 'Newly Released' write up by Amy Virshup. There's a link to the article on my website
www.irenesabatini.com.
I think that this line encapsulates the novel very well: 'Their shared status as outsiders brings them together in this novel about love, family and what it means to be African'. This is Lindiwe and Ian's story put in a (lovely) nutshell. Needless to say, I got some friends to deliver a hard copy!
www.irenesabatini.com
