* WINNER OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN M-NET LITERARY AWARD *
A tale of deception, misunderstanding, and betrayal set between modern-day Africa and Nazi-occupied France.
Haunted by his dreams of the Masai, Tim Curtiz journeys to East Africa to research and write a screenplay about the enigmatic Claudia Cohn-Casson, a French anthropologist who studied the Masai in the late 1930s and was then deported to Auschwitz upon her return to Paris.
‘It is like a little death to put this book down’ Times Literary Supplement
A tale of deception, misunderstanding, and betrayal set between modern-day Africa and Nazi-occupied France.
Haunted by his dreams of the Masai, Tim Curtiz journeys to East Africa to research and write a screenplay about the enigmatic Claudia Cohn-Casson, a French anthropologist who studied the Masai in the late 1930s and was then deported to Auschwitz upon her return to Paris.
‘It is like a little death to put this book down’ Times Literary Supplement
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Reviews
There is nothing tired or derivative here; the writing is sharp, the characters vividly drawn, the narrative sinuous . . . it confirms Cartwright's individuality and promise . . . In its bold design, as well as its wonderfully detailed portrait of African village life, it achieves real distinction
Cartwright makes his pages as vividly sensuous as they are caustically intelligent
It is like a little death to put this book down
The book works well, as a story, as a compendium of reflections on race and nationhood and as a novel with a refined and distinctive narrative voice . . . an elegantly complex, unfailingly intelligent novel
Remarkable . . . The prose is spare and exact, yet glorious
There is so much to take in along the way, so many essential truths, so much pain and beauty, that Masai Dreaming takes on the compulsive quality of a dream from which one is reluctant to awake. If I were ever asked to select a few books that might help to change the world, Cartwright's would be near the top of the list
A provocative novel