The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi - Rilegato

Japin, Arthur; Rilke, Ina

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0375406751 ISBN 13: 9780375406751

Casa editrice: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2000

Riassunto

Their arrival in Holland in 1837 causes a deep disturbance among two African princes, Kwame and Kwasi, who find their innocence stripped away as they attend boarding school and learn European ways.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"A classic tragedy . . . insights abound throughout . . . This is a true story, fully and humanly imagined, and that is the measure of Japin's accomplishment."
--Heidi Benson, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"[A] novel of unusual power and authenticity . . . exceptionally well-told and emotionally absorbing--and it is only the beginning of a promising literary career for Japin."
--Dennis Lythgoe, THE DESERET NEWS (Salt Lake City)

"Fascinatingly ambitious . . . a historically complex, richly empathetic account of [Japin's] subject's life history . . . [He] writes with a performer's instinct for the concise, playable scene, . . . [with] an irony beyond the realm of ordinary fiction . . . [and] an arch, devastating delicacy . . . a haunting and highly unusual historical novel . . . Mr. Japin artfully allows the clever, cantankerous voice of his aged counterpart to take shape. This book ends beautifully with a shrewd, unsentimental sense of how the face of the aged Kwasi Boachi acquired its wisdom."
--Janet Maslin, NEW YORK TIMES

"Gorgeous . . . As in Conrad, the ultimate destination reveals not so much a place on the map as a view of the human heart . . . Japin has blended life and dream in an exquisite example of that trickiest of genres, the historical novel . . . a work that affirms the human heart's resilience even as it reveals its darkest prejudice."
--Philip Connors, NEWSDAY

"Quietly devastating . . . the historical disaster of European colonialism . . . is beautifully evoked by means of the twinned experiences of the two cousins. . . it takes a subject that by now may look stale--or should I say gray?--and gives it back its rich and tragic color."
--Daniel Mendelsohn, NEW YORK

"Rich and risky . . . the trick here depends on working the surfaces of things until they are exact -- whether it is a fever dream of Africa, the green fields of Java, the cold of a Dutch sickroom . . . [A] deeply humane book about a spectacularly exotic subject [with a] spaciousness and stamina, and an unforced sense of history, that nowadays are almost as unusual as Kwasi Boachi himself."
--Michael Pye, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"A mesmerizing tale about the personal cost of assimilation . . . Like Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, Japin's ventriloquism is virtually flawless."

--John Freeman, TIME OUT NEW YORK

"[A] brilliant first novel, a compact epic of the consequences of European colonization of Africa, written by a Dutch Renaissance man . . . a potent dramatization of culture shock, ethnic injustice, and exploitation . . . As artful and moving an analysis of the tragedy of colonialism as we have seen in many years."

--KIRKUS (STARRED)

L'autore:

Arthur Japin is an actor, opera singer and writer. His research for The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi took him through Europe, Asia and Africa; during one trip to Ghana, he was kidnapped and held for ransom before breaking away from his captors and making his escape. He lives in Amsterdam.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Data di pubblicazione: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375406751
• ISBN 13: 9780375406751
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 384