God's Bits of Wood in Stellenbosch, Western Cape for sale

Tema:
Fiction
Soort:
African Fiction
Condition : Good
In 1947-48 the workers on the Dakar-Niger railway came out on strike. Sembene Ousmane, in this vivid, timeless novel, evinces all the color, passion, and tragedy of those formative years in the history of West Africa.support the strikers. The strike breaks down the barriers which cause inequality between men and women, black and white."
This is a strong, cool novel by an African which centers on a railroad strike by Negro workers in and around Dakar. With little background, either of customs or politics, it presents simply a human record of the characters and violent events involved and avoids bitterness. The strike, which begins among the extremely poor, underpaid Africans who live in shanty towns around Dakar, soon leads to riots. Women and children are killed. Then the town water is cut off and danger sets in, among the strikers' families. A ram, belonging to a rich African, is seized and slaughtered and occasions further arrests. The adolescent boys steal the white men's chickens and smash windows; three are shot. The women, driven from their subservient customary roles, attack the native police and finally, in desperation, march to Dakar Meanwhile, after bargaining with the white, the strike is finally won at the cost of many lives, and the status of black and white has become more equal.... It is a powerful story, and so filled with people and the effect of the strike on their private lives, that it reads like a family history; a sombre account of people bound together by blood, friendship and habit in a ferocious struggle for future existence. (Kirkus Reviews)
About the author(1995)Sembene Ousmane, film director and writer, was born in Senegal and worked as a fisherman before attending l'Ecole de Ceramique at Marsassoum. He then worked as a plumber, a bricklayer and an apprentice mechanic in Dakar. After the war he became a docker and trade union leader in Marseilles, and out of this experience he wroteLe Docker Noir(1956). He had also publishedOh Pays, mon Beau Peuple(1957),L'Harmattan(1964) and the collection of stories,Voltaique(1962), which was translated asGod's Bits of Woodand appears in the African Writers Series (AWS).
Bibliographic information
Title God's Bits of Wood
Author Ousmane Sembene
Edition Paperback
Publisher Heinemann, 1995
ISBN 0435909592, 9780435909598
Length 248 pages
Subjects Literary Criticism?American?African American