Books I Read July 13th, 2025

I grow slightly stronger every day.

Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou – An African everyman is seduced, betrayed by the dream of life in Paris.

The Shadow of Things to Come by Kossi Efoui – A youth labors to survive in an imaginary African country turned Orwellian nightmare. Efoui reduces his surrealist landscape to component parts, denuded of cultural specificity and effective as a parable for the creeping totalitarianism of the modern state.

Mohammed and Charlemagne by Henri Pirenne – The collapse of late Roman society in Europe began not with the barbarian invasions, who largely maintained the status quo, but with the expansion of Islam in the Mediterranean, which shut off an essential conduit of trade and thought between Constantinople and Europe and led to the distinctive 'Germanic' culture of the middle ages. Is this true? Maybe? Certainly seems plausible! I found myself entertained by the style and argument.

The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch – A two-fisted Semitic gangster tries to hold back the tide of fascism in pre-war Warsaw. There is a certain sort of Jewish man who loves to remember the crimes of Meyer Lansky and old Arnie Rothstein, identifying with an ideal of strength they find themselves conspicuously lacking (they will also brag about the raid on Entebbe). As a virile Semitic specimen myself, I am, thank G-d, spared of this predilection. I am not sure if Twardoch is a member of the tribe-that he still lives in Poland suggest not—but this is very much in that vein, a childish fantasy of violence justified by ethnic pride. The back compares it to Inglorious Basterds, another story which dared to ask the burning question 'wouldn't it be fun to shoot Hitler?' Yes, yes it would. Thanks for your contribution.

The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivanna by Maryse Conde – I read this book.

The Antipeople by Sony Labou Tansi – A schoolmaster loses himself in unfulfilled lust, the corrupt African state, and the comprehensive meaninglessness of the human endeavor. Post-Colonial African existentialism.