The Jive Talker

Whao! Jesus! Just come down on earth and see this! NUKA 02/08/00 Samson Kambalu's father wore smart three-piece, London-made suits from the Sixties. He'd dreamt of being a doctor but settled for hospital administration and a peripatetic lifestyle with his ever expanding family in tow. He is the 'Jive Talker' of this extraordinary memoir - a man of thwarted ambition, boundless optimism and manic philosophising. He died of AIDS in 1995, bequeathing his son 'the Diptych' - an eclectic library of science, philosophy and English-language classics - a passion for words and a boundless imagination.In this utterly original, often subversive book, Samson Kambalu writes of his childhood in a country few are able to pinpoint on a map. As the family moves from feast to real poverty and deprivation, and back to plenty again, depending on their father's professional fortunes, we are introduced to life in a country in which no dissent is tolerated, where political opponents are 'disappeared' and a portrait of Life President Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda is always guaranteed to be watching. But this is also a country in which a young boy obsessed with books, girls, fashion, football and Michael Jackson wins a free education at the Kamuzu Academy ('The Eton of Africa') and grows up to be one of England's most promising young conceptual artists. With dazzling prose, wicked humour and not a little bit of artistic licence, "The Jive Talker" opens the door to an Africa that is rarely written about.

ISBN 0099512386   DEWEY 968.9704092 ISBN13 9780099512387 (What's this?)   DEWEY edition DC22 Publisher Vintage   Pages 256 Imprint Vintage   Published in London Format Paperback   Academic level General Publication date 04 Jun 2009

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