Book Reviews

The Trial of Robert Mugabe by Chielo Zonz Eze

This is an elegantly simple story. However, don't let its simplicity hide its depth. It's a beautiful tale, but an ugly story. The tale is told in what seems to me to be an oral history tradition. It is a true story told fictionally. It has a rhythm to it and it creates a definite aura. It connects to both literature and history.

Robert Mugabe is a dictator, chosen by his people, but who then followed what he wanted despite what his people wanted. As a result, as often happens in such cases, whole peoples were nearly or completely wiped out. This is history. Mugabe still rules today, though still opposed.

Eze has found a way to try him for his crimes. He has found a voice for the dead and he has made them real, believable personalities. These are people we can care about rather than the unknown, voiceless, faceless victims of Mugabe's power. I cannot say who among the witnesses are actual people given voice by Eze and who are "Everyman," since my knowledge of African life is vague and mainly uninformed. However the writers he refers to, Yvonne Vera and Alexander Kanengoni, and their books, are real.

The Trial of Robert Mugabe is a cautionary tale -- specifically for Mugabe, himself, but I can also see it being read or told when Mugabe is buried so far in the past that people aren't sure if he was real or just a creation of Eze's to warn against blind dictatorship. It also serves to make the current reader aware of and care about what is happening in Zimbabwe.

Stupid History is lots of fun tidbits of mislearned history, hoaxes and some odd, unknown facts. Evidently I had better teachers than Gregory assumes, because I knew quite a bit already and some of the misinformation was news to me. (I learned it right the first time.) It was fun to read, although, much as I like puns, having a pun at the end of every entry became a little much. It's probably better read in bits and pieces, rather than all at once.

I liked Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell. Agnes Shanklin is as real as any living, breathing person I've met.

The plot of the story is simple. Agnes, an "old maid" (this is about 1921) schoolteacher, takes a trip to Egypt after recovering from the war and the influenza epidemic of 1919. While there, she meets some of the famous statesmen and military men who were "solving" the middle east problem. She also falls in love while there.

The plot is not what held my interest. As Agnes tells her story, you know that she lived through what she is telling. Reading it, I sensed that some of the gaps in my knowledge of the period were being filled without the drudgery of history lectures. I found myself fascinated by a topic that had not particularly interested me before.

I was delighted to read in the acknowledgments at the end, that Ms. Russell had done her homework and invented only Agnes's story. Where it crossed the well known individuals, she kept them true to reality.

While I didn't hate it, I felt the final chapter was added on to express some opinions of the author that didn't naturally fit into the story. The naturalness, and reality, that I loved about the rest of the book fell away here. Though Russell gave hints early on, it just didn't work for me. Nonetheless, the book was a good read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in love stories and/or the early twentieth century.