In search of missing family members, Zulu priest Stephen Kumalo leaves his South African village to traverse the deep and perplexing city of Johannesburg in the 1940s. With his sister turned prostitute, his brother turned labor protestor and his son, Absalom, arrested for the murder of a white man, Kumalo must grapple with how to bring his family back from the brink of destruction as the racial tension throughout Johannesburg hampers his attempts to protect his family. With a deep yet gentle voice rounded out by his English accent, Michael York captures the tone and energy of this novel. His rhythmic narration proves hypnotizing. From the fierce love of Kumalo to the persuasive rhetoric of Kumalo's brother and the solemn regret of Absalom, York injects soul into characters tempered by their socioeconomic status as black South Africans. (May)
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Night Vale is a town that provides far more questions than answers, mostly about angels and mountains and other things that may or may not exist. But the long-awaited Welcome to Night Vale novel, based on the popular, increasingly surreal, decidedly tongue-in-cheek podcast, resolves one big mystery for us: what’s the deal with The Man in the […]
Bookish people (like you and me) can be snobbish about the film and TV adaptations of our beloved novels. We complain about their lack of depth or failure of execution. We bemoan producers’ lack of original thinking. But sometimes it works the other way around: pop culture offers up freshness and originality in the form […]
Befitting its status as an anonymous city in the American Southwest, Night Vale can be hard to pin down. Sure, there are the Patsy Cline seances at the local record store and the romantic evenings in the Arby’s parking lot that you would expect of any small desert town. But what of Night Vale’s more unique eccentricities, like […]