Review: The Signare of Goree by Laura Rahme

Synopsis: 1846. In the heat of West Africa, the French navy uncovers the corpses of two French soldiers. Inspector Maurice Leroux arrives at the island of Gorée. It seems death has come to this small colonial outpost off the Senegal coast, home to the prosperous mixed-blood women known as the signares.

The navy suspects that the Bambara people, emboldened by approaching emancipation, may be out for blood. While confronted by the locals’ strange magical beliefs, Maurice remains skeptical. Does malevolence play a part, or are these deaths accidental, brought upon by the brutality of nature in an island known as the white man's grave?

But when murder strikes, it becomes clear that a killer is stalking Gorée.

Swept by a mystery unlike any he has known, Maurice meets Signare Angélique Aussenac. The proud métis, deserted by her wealthy Bordeaux lover, casts her spell upon Maurice.

But beyond the throbbing sounds of the tam-tams and the glittering signare soirées, danger lurks. Someone is watching. And the deaths go on.

Could the killer be one of the rich Bordeaux merchants? Or are they hiding among the powerful signares?

~ ~ ~

I finally started this a couple of days ago and finished it today (20 Sept 2024). I would have completed it in one sitting but was rudely interrupted by life.

In the 18th and 19th century, Gorée was home to a Franco-African Creole, or Métis, community of merchants. Métis women, called signares, were descendants of African women and European traders, were especially important to the city's business life. The signares owned ships and property and commanded male clerks. They were also famous for cultivating fashion and entertainment. As the trade in slaves declined in the late eighteenth century, Gorée converted to legitimate commerce. In 1872, Goree became a French commune with an elected mayor and a municipal council.  However, our story is set in the 1840s.

The Signare of Goree is a compelling mystery, dripping in ancient culture and superstitions, the land of Goree and its people sweep evocatively across the pages, as Laura Rahme demonstrates her mastery of story-telling. Without giving too much away, the reader, like Leroux, is beguiled and bewitched by Goree, succumbing to the rhythmic tam-tams and its ancient magic, a distraction from the task at hand - finding a killer that may not be human.

Highly recommended.

The Dark Kingdoms: The Impact of White Civilisations on Three Great African Monarchies

Alan Scholefield's book " ....  is the story of three kingdoms. Two of them succumbed to white pressure and disappeared. One of them survives. Each is seen at a critical period in its history, when black met white head-on."

King Affonso ruled the first of the three kingdoms, and welcomed the Portuguese as brothers, only to find his people were treated like cattle.

King Gelele ruled the second kingdom with a will of iron and fought to keep his culture alive but, trapped between white invaders and rival tribes, that iron will would bend and buckle.

Lastly Moshesh of Lesotho, the last man standing: who played them all at their own games and won.

Using diaries from famous figures like the explorer Richard Burton, Alan Scholefield breathes new life into a past that once seemed dead.

read more about Africa's Monarchies here

• African Kings by Daniel Laine
• Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo Monarchy: Ethiopia, 1830-1932 by Herbert S. Lewis
• The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History edited by John Parker & Richard Reid
• Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia by Paul B. Henze
• Wikipedia - Monarchies In Africa

Review: Marrakech Noir by Yessin Adnan

Another solid outing in the Akashic Noir series - this time, the setting is the exotic Marrakech. The city is one that is more prone to scandal than crime, and as such there is no tradition of noir. Fantastic storytelling is used to block out dark memories and dark tales are avoided. Even now, we are told, only 30 detective stories have been written in the last two decades!

So our authors, from a variety of different cultural backgrounds, have taken inspiration from old crimes, long hidden, as well as those crimes now prevalent in a modern city. Add a touch of spice and humour, and you have Marrakech Noir!

Recalling Africa’s harrowing tale of enslavement

From The Herald:

In his book, “Slaves and Slavery”, published in 1998, the British writer Duncan Clarke defines slavery as “the reduction of fellow human beings to the legal status of chattels, allowing them to be bought and sold as goods”.

“The African slave trade, surely one of the most tragic and disturbing episodes in the history of mankind,” Clarke writes, “had its origins in the intervention of forces from the civilisations that developed in the regions of the Mediterranean sea – today’s Europe and the Middle East – into the arena of the more fragmented civilisations of sub-Saharan Africa.

In modern times, the popular image of African slavery springs from the vision of a tormented male suffering under the lash of unceasing labour on some “New World” sugar plantation.

Yet the real face of servitude finds its focus in the forced migration of millions of girls and young women across the Sahara and the Horn of Africa in to the institutions of Islamic concubinage. – New African magazine.

read more @ New African Magazine

The Treasures of Timbuktu

From an article in The New York Times, comes a tale straight from the pages of an Indianna Jones script - a fascinating tale of a group of librarians who saved the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu from jihadists. Or did they????

On Jan. 28, 2013, news broke of an epic cultural catastrophe. That morning, the mayor of Timbuktu, Halle Ousmane Cissé, told journalists that the jihadist occupiers of the town had destroyed its famous literary heritage. Experts declared it to be a disaster of incalculable proportions, the greatest loss of the written word in Africa since the destruction of the library of Alexandria.

Journalist and author, Charlie English was determined to find out more, and uncovered a story as fantastical as it was incredulous. He concludes that:

At its core, the story of the rescue of Timbuktu’s manuscripts is significantly true. But if it is more complex than it first appears, and vastly embellished, we should expect no less. The most fascinating part of the Timbuktu tale is that the doubts and distortions surrounding the 21st-century “Indiana Jones moment” mirror the myths that have arisen about the city throughout its history. Timbuktu has always traded on legend. The misreadings of this city have been the making of this place; they are what draws the world to it.

This event was further reported by various news organisation who beguiled readers with the epic adventures of the "bad-ass librarians" who with near military precision manged to remove over 370,000 manuscripts from a city in the grips of being overrun by military insurgents to safety - all without being caught.

read entire article here @ The New York Times
read more here @ NPR and  @ The Weekend Australian

A number of books have been written on the subject:

• The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
• The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past by Charlie English
• The Book Smugglers Of Timbuktu: The Race To Reach The Fabled City And The Fantastic Effort To Save Its Past by Charlie English

read reviews here 

• William Dalrymple reviews The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English for The Guardian
• Tom Zoellner review The Storied City by Charlie English for the New York Times
• The Storied City @ Kirkus Review
• Bad-Ass Librarians @ Kirkus Review

     

African Kaiser by Robert Gaudi

Anyone interested in 20th-century culture is bound to spend some time thinking about World War I. Yet while most of us are aware of the horrors of trench combat and the thousands lying dead in Flanders fields where poppies blow, what about the war outside Europe? What about German East Africa? 

Still, the war in Africa was more than a sideshow. A brilliant guerrilla strategist, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck forged his fanatically loyal Schutztruppe — a small colonial infantry consisting of largely black soldiers — into “a highly efficient fighting force, aggressive and completely self-supporting,” and one that was “the first racially integrated army in modern history.” As von Lettow bluntly said, “Here in Africa we are all equal. The better man will always outwit the inferior and the color of his skin does not matter.” These words were not mere lip service, either: His actions show that he genuinely believed them.

Read Michael Dirda's full review at the Washington Post and see more reviews on Amazon