Book 16, The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963) - Margaret Laurence
From the back cover:
“The ten stories gathered together in The Tomorrow-Tamer are Margaret Laurence’s first published fiction. Set in raucous and often terrifying Ghana, where shiny Jaguars and modern jazz jostle for eminence against fetish figures, tribal rites, and the unchanging beat of jungle drums, the stories tell of individuals, European and African, trying to come to terms with the frightening world brought about by the country’s new freedom.

With the same compassion and understanding she would bring to her later fiction set in Canada, Laurence succeeds brilliantly in capturing the atmosphere of a continent and of individual men and women struggling for survival under the impact of the wind of change.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on Margaret Laurence
the Wikipedia article on Ghana

My thoughts:
I really enjoyed these stories of West Africa at the twilight of European colonialism. They are filled with ambivalence as old beliefs and traditions die away as the modern world invades/is embraced. It’s a very difficult situation (and we see it everywhere, not just in the colonies of Europe). With modern science and the global monoculture, we are all in a continual process of loss, as languages, stories, beliefs, habitat, tribal (or rural) lifestyle are replaced with what’s new, modern, clean, intelligible, monolithic, American (often). This is a theme that Alistair MacLeod explored in his books, though his focus was on the Gaelic culture of Cape Breton.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Margaret Laurence (coming soon to my CanLit Challenge).

Book 9, No Great Mischief (2001) - Alistair MacLeod
From the back cover:
“Alexander MacDonald guides us through his family’s mythic past as he recollects the heroic stories of his people: loggers, miners, drinkers, adventurers; men forever in exile, forever linked to their clan. There is the legendary patriarch who left the Scottish Highlands in 1779 and resettled in ‘the land of trees,’ where his descendants became a separate Nova Scotia clan. There is the team of brothers and cousins, expert miners in demand around the world for their dangerous skills. And there is Alexander and his twin sister, who have left Cape Breton and prospered, yet are haunted by the past. Elegiac, hypnotic, by turns joyful and sad, No Great Mischief is a spellbinding story of family, loyalty, and of the blood ties that bind us to the land from which our ancestors came.”