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!




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