Present Books Supposing Brazzaville Beach
| Original Title: | Brazzaville Beach |
| ISBN: | 0380780496 (ISBN13: 9780380780495) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Hope Clearwater, Eugene Mallabar, John Clearwater, Usman Shoukry |
| Setting: | Republic of the Congo(Central African Republic) |
| Literary Awards: | James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction (1990) |
William Boyd
ebook | Pages: 320 pages Rating: 3.94 | 4696 Users | 350 Reviews
Details About Books Brazzaville Beach
| Title | : | Brazzaville Beach |
| Author | : | William Boyd |
| Book Format | : | ebook |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 320 pages |
| Published | : | August 1st 1995 by Harper Perennial (first published September 2nd 1990) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Africa. Contemporary |
Narration In Favor Of Books Brazzaville Beach
In the heart of a civil war-torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man . . .Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.
Rating About Books Brazzaville Beach
Ratings: 3.94 From 4696 Users | 350 ReviewsWrite Up About Books Brazzaville Beach
I've been meaning to read Boyd for awhile now and this one presented a tenuous link to King Leopold's Ghost: the beach gets its name from one of Henry Morton Stanley's contemporaries (de Brazza) and its main narrative is set in a chimpanzee research preserve within the Congolese jungle. More of a segue than a link, and any similarities end there. The story opens in Brazzaville where the main character, Hope Clearwater, is working as an ethologist studying primate behaviour. During her timeOf chimps and humans...As Hope Clearwater sits on the beach outside her home in the Republic of the Congo, she looks back over the circumstances of her life that have brought her here: her marriage to mathematician John Clearwater, and her later work at Grosso Arvore, a chimpanzee research project run by the world-famous primate expert, Eugene Mallabar. The two stories, though separate, have the common theme of the pursuit of scientific fame and the toll that can take on those who fail. There
I couldn't put this book down. I connected on a weird level, maybe because I myself worked with monkeys in Africa, maybe because I see myself turning into Hope Clearwater in a couple of years, with all her scientific-minded cynicism, even though the writing style wasn't my favourite. I didn't mind the constant flip between first and third person narration. I found the part of the story before she goes to Africa (her husband's madness) incredibly boring, but I loved how the story shows that it
Brazzaville Beach tells the stories of Hope Clearwater. It covers two periods, telling them in parallel although one follows the other chronologically. Each period comes to a dramatic conclusion. The book builds to deliver both conclusions as close together as the narrative allows. There are themes that recur in Hope's experiences. There is anger, violence, madness, conspiracy. There is violence instigated by academics, and tenderness provided by soldiers.So far I've described a complex
I told my uncle I needed a book I could disappear in, and he lended me this one. I loved every page of it, being so fascinating and urging me to read the next. I never read a book I can compare to this story but I really do hope I will.
When the novel opens, Hope Clearwater is living in a house on Brazzaville Beach that she owns as a result of her Egyptian lover's death in the civil war in the Congo. She is reflecting on the complexities of her life over the last two years and recuperating from being taken hostage by the rebels. Hope is trying to figure out all that's happened to her, both in England with her husband and the events that caused her to flee to a new job in Africa, and the challenges she's faced since then. How
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