Makinda Lo: Natural Selection

Malinda Lo's novella Natural Selection, set in the same fictional universe as her novels Adaptation and Inheritance, focuses on Amber Gray, the Earthborn alien who is a key character and love interest for the protagonist of the novels.

This is a prequel of sorts, giving us a glimpse into Amber's early life as a child of two cultures and her struggle to develop a sense of self that includes both her heritage and her adopted culture. As Amber and her polyamorous. family (one mother, two fathers) move back and forth between the two planets, her experiences and relationships give her the chance to explore her identity in both worlds.

Lo's work is notably GLBT-friendly - something I am very happy to see - and Amber's preference for relationships with other girls plays a large part in her coming to see who she is. On Earth, she is attracted to her best friend, who rejects Amber when she is outed by the boy her friend has been pursuing; on her own world, same-sex relationships are seen as perfectly natural, and it is in part through a shared rite of passage with a girl who sees her as a prospective lover that she comes to terms with the differences between her two worlds and finds a way to be herself in both.

I find myself hoping that Lo will write more about Amber, and the protagonists from the two novels.

Uzodinma Iweala: Our Kind of People: A Continent's Challenge, A Country's Hope

Uzodinma Iweala, the author of Our Kind of People: A Continent's Challenge, A Country's Hope, is a medical doctor and an award-winning novelist. Born in Nigeria, he is a graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and he continues to divide his time between his adopted country and his birth country. All of these things make him eminently qualified to tell the story of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria and other parts of Africa from a, shall we say, post-colonial perspective. As he comments early in his book,

For the rest of the world, Africa’s story has been one of exploitation, famine, floods, war, and now tragic demise as a result of HIV/AIDS. This troubles me. Despite growing up with exposure to both the Western world and Africa—in particular, Nigeria, where my family is from—even I sometimes succumb to thinking of Africa as a place beyond hope and Africans as sad creatures destined to slow-dance with adversity. I should know better, because I have experienced the continent, at least my small corner of it, as a place characterized by something other than tragedy, but it is hard not to think negatively, especially when the vast majority of media from the past few hundred years—the explorers’ accounts, novels, newspaper articles, documentaries—have focused on Africa’s pain. Though a relatively new disease, HIV/ AIDS and its stories have again brought to the foreground a whole set of images and stereotypes about Africans, our societies, our bodies, our sexualities. Many of these representations of Africa are deployed to elicit sympathy and encourage assistance with HIV/AIDS and other issues. Often, however, they unknowingly encourage the opposite, distancing and disconnection, because they provide an image of Africa and Africans to which few people can relate. The lives and voices of real people, who like everybody else in this world find ways to cope with adversity, are often lost amid the drumbeat of deprivation and demise. This confuses me. At times, this angers me. While I understand that Africa—its countries, its people—has endured a fair amount of adversity, the tragic Africa is not the only continent I know.

Over the course of several years, Iweala interviewed people from all sides of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Nigeria, from government officials to frontline heath care providers to activists and educators to people living with HIV/AIDS. He examines issues of stigma, lack of public education and debate, social and cultural attitudes toward sexuality, the role of poverty and the cost of ARV drugs as elements in the spread of the infection in Nigeria - which has the third-largest population of HIV positive people in the world. A highly accessible look at a serious health problem that the developed world has too often tended to sensationalise and yet ignore at the same time.

Ben Elton: Dead Famous

Elton's Dead Famous is a satirical examination of reality TV and the cult of celebrity, plus an interesting (though perhaps a tad too obvious) murder mystery. Although, when it comes down to it, intentional satire is hardly needed, this stuff satirises itself so well, all one has to to is show what actually happens, and it's over the top enough to seem like satire. Well, maybe leaving out the murder. Funny and sad by turns, it keeps the reader's interest high by not actually revealing the victim until well into the story - though I must admit I had my suspicions about the killer even before I knew who had been killed. But then I often figure mysteries out before the final reveal, and in this case, it doesn't affect the savage snark at all.

A friend recommended the author and this book in particular some time ago, and nagged me til I read it - and I'm glad he did. I will be reading more of Elton's work, as this was well-written, well-plotted, and very enjoyable.

Brian M. Fagan: The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists, and Archaeologists in Egypt

In The Rape of the Nile, Brian Fagan tells the story of centuries of theft and destruction of priceless artefacts and archeological sites, largely by foreign invaders and adventurers, but also by Egyptians themselves. The catalogue of loss is a long one, and includes Roman conquerers, medieval adventurers, Napoleonic soldiers and historians, British entrepreneurs and archeologists - all of whom felt that the treasures of the ancient land of Egypt were theirs for the taking.

During the past two thousand years Ancient Egypt has effectively been destroyed, both by the Egyptians themselves and by a host of foreigners, many of them arriving in the Nile Valley in the name of science and nationalism. The loss to archaeology is incalculable, that to Egyptian history even more staggering. As a result of the looting and pillage of generations of irresponsible visitors, the artifacts and artistic achievements of the Ancient Egyptians are scattered all over the globe, some of the most beautiful and spectacular of them stored or displayed thousands of miles from the Nile.

Fagan's detailed accounting of the discoveries and wholesale removals of the cultural wealth of an entire civilisation - often in more recent times under the paternalistic colonial argument that Western institutions can take better care of Egypt's heritage than Egyptians can - is valuable both as a record of the development of Egyptology and as a testament to the necessity of cultural sensitivity on the part of archeologists, and cultural preservation on the part of countries such as Egypt whose history has been turned into a tourist bazaar.