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paperback £8.99
Salt Publishing
Paddyfield.com
More reviews by Wes Stevens
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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A Fragile Hope by Ken Kamoche
By linking Africa to East Asia and Europe, KEN KAMOCHE riffs uniquely.
A Kenyan-born Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Kamoche has used jazz improvisation to teach business management, and in his collected short stories, "A Fragile Hope", money dealings have a way of proliferating into hard compromises. The book focuses on Africa (as the musician character Toumane in "The Smell of Fresh Grass" gently chides Lisa, a Hong Kong native, "You see darlin', Africa is so big. Mali is in West Africa.") But whether Mali, Kenya or Zimbabwe, the permeable borders of emerging economies and disparate cultures collide.
Among expatriates in China, there's an abundance of white ghost gweilo literature. But in "Random Check", witness racial profiling and the get-up-to-change-seats experience of a black ghost hak gwei. Yet in "London Slaves", it's the black entrepreneur who demands white servants and calls it discrimination when they don't appear. This juxtaposition of perspectives could easily translate into a novel.
Stories set completely in Kenya include "Private Lessons", which explores communication between a prominent government minister and his daughter in the midst of a mob uprising. Overtones of corruption - a recurring theme - reach the village level with the cowardly prison executioner in "The Warrior's Last Job." From slum dwellers to the elite, Kenya a place of tenuous dreams, portrayed with passion.
Paragraphs of staccato sentences impart urgency, creating a rarity within the short story genre: for the most part, these are page-turners. Take the example of two Nairobi friends in the "Dream Went Out", deciding who should act as mule to smuggle heroin from Bangkok.
- The coin hit the air. Tail chasing head. Head chasing tail. A dance of the macabre embellished by the intermittent flash as the sun rays kissed the receding surfaces of the dancing coin. Not a cloud in the sky. Only the silver lining ahead of the imminent storm.
A final praise: regardless of a cadence of multiple short sentences that can occasionally hinder the narrative flow and evoke an unnecessary bluntness, obvious care has gone into capturing dialogue. The transliterated Thai-English in the "Dream Went Out" is a pleasure to read aloud; the nuanced accents of Chinese or French speakers similarly authenticate.
The stories total eleven in all, and Kamoche, who resides in Hong Kong, has received Arts Council England support for this book. With its varied cast, diverse themes, and fitting title, A FRAGILE HOPE extends beyond the Eurocentric East-West pathway.
Wes Stevens
17/04/2007
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Wes Stevens is a Hong Kong-based writer and educator. His first book is A-R-C-H-I-P-E-L-A-G-O, a collection of Asian short stories. |
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