Content tagged with “africa”

“Here’s the thing about The Interpreter — the opening scene is important, but I didn’t understand why. I don’t think they did a great job explaining (or even hinting at) what was going on. As a result, I was a little confused throughout the film Nicole Kidman is the United Nations interpreter of the…”

“This comes from the Latin word barbarus meaning foreign. ‘Barbary’ referred to foreign lands (lands not of ones own). And ‘barbarian’ referred to the people who lived there. The northern coast of Africa was named ‘The Barbary Coast’ by English speakers after attacks from pirates based in Tripoli…”

“There are ‘epic’ novels, and then there’s this. It’s the history of South Africa, starting in 14,000 BC and ending in 1978. There are 14 chapters, and each chapter handles a different time period. We start about 10,000 years back with cave dwellers wandering the southern part of the continent,…”

“This is a recounting of the First Barbary War. That event is important because it was the first overseas conflict the young United States ever fought in. (From the Marine Corp hymn: ‘From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli…’ The ‘shores of Tripoli’ happened in the First Barbary War.)…”

“Absolutely stunning novel. I had heard of the book for years. My mother was born in Ethiopia in the 1940s (my grandparents were missionaries from New Zealand), and several people had told me that the story in the novel resembled my mother’s experience there as a child. The book was purchased for me…”

“I’m an old-school James Bond fan. I’ve read every original novel (the Fleming novels), and most the later novels (Gardener, Benson, and some others). I’ll come out and say it: this is the best non-Fleming Bond novel I’ve ever read. It’s divided into two parts. The first is Bond’s mission in a small…”

“This is one of those ‘flash titles’ that get published immediately after something happens. Based on some claims in the book, and the publication date, it appears that it happened a couple of weeks afterwards. The writing is not great. It’s a little scattered. But it is a somewhat gripping analysis…”