A hilarious satire of Bush-era America about a fundamentalist Christian spy who has to track down a tech entrepreneur/inventor after she's kidnapped bA hilarious satire of Bush-era America about a fundamentalist Christian spy who has to track down a tech entrepreneur/inventor after she's kidnapped by a super-wealthy religious fanatic. Kurt Baumeister does a great job imagining a future America in which the Christian imperialist culture of the Bush and Cheney years gets amped up to 500%. It's a terrifying world of "Christian Capitalism" and fundamentalist religious empires, but the plot itself is also a madcap Pynchonesque farce full of buffoonish operatives and crazy religious plots to take over the world that effectively satirizes today's self-serious political thrillers. Above all, I think it's fascinating in a post-Trump era to read about the cultural anxieties of a presidency that suddenly seems so distant; the 2000s weren't that long ago, but history moves faster than we think. Pax Americana thus effectively captures the insanity of a world that's thankfully now become something of a historical relic....more
Fantastic history of medieval Africa, told in small, fragment-like chapters that each center on a particular historical artifact, document, or source.Fantastic history of medieval Africa, told in small, fragment-like chapters that each center on a particular historical artifact, document, or source. These brief chapters function as both stand alone stories about different regions of the continent, from Great Zimbabwe to Mansa Musa's Mali, and, when taken together, as a sort of incomplete puzzle of reflective of our patchwork knowledge of this great continent during this not-so-long ago time. It's a book that shatters all those "dark continent" myths and reminds us that what we know of this history is only a tantalizingly small glimpse, a shadow cast by a vibrant and now-departed world....more
Fantastic, wild, barreling-forward kind of prose, with long monologues and descriptions of Delhi's history in all its mystical, magical grandeur, as wFantastic, wild, barreling-forward kind of prose, with long monologues and descriptions of Delhi's history in all its mystical, magical grandeur, as well as a compelling central narrative centering on the life of Saleem Sinai, Rushdie's fictional protagonist, born midnight simultaneous with the new nation. Saleem is one of the funniest and most charming narrators I've ever come across, garrulous, baroque, Tristam Shandy-like in his digressions and long-windedness--but there's an operatic power to the way he patiently unfolds his story, and the fifty or so pages leading up to his birth at the end of Part One are perhaps the most stunning in all of literature, crescendoing intensity as India prepares for its independence, fireworks bursting outside while in a hospital agonizing and life-changing decisions are made. In the end, for a novel to be at once funny, tragic, personal, and historical is a rare feat of genius, the result of a once in a century talent. And to think, he wrote this when he was only 33....more
I'm not usually moved by novels about the nuclear family, so the fact that I found this so good says a lot. It's funny, it's sad, it's political, it'sI'm not usually moved by novels about the nuclear family, so the fact that I found this so good says a lot. It's funny, it's sad, it's political, it's insightful--most importantly, it's got wonderful prose, long, beautiful sentences that bring to life this brief, anxious, cultural moment, just before 9/11 and the end of 90s prosperity. Ultimately, I think all the negativity surrounding Franzen is really overblown--underneath everything, he is quite simply an amazing writer....more
One of the funniest and smartest things I've read all year. The prose is beautiful, full of wondrous and vivid detail, and the story of exile in all iOne of the funniest and smartest things I've read all year. The prose is beautiful, full of wondrous and vivid detail, and the story of exile in all its tragedy and absurdity really resonates, even to those of us who've never experienced such pain. Above all, it's a celebration of the cerebral and literary life, like Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai a refreshingly unabahsedly intellectual and high-brow book....more
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