WINDMILLS OF THE GODS. By Sidney Sheldon

Another gripping work by Sheldon of course. For me the character of Angel the international assassin remains intriguing, if not quite convincing in the end.

It is some sort of masterstroke that the author ensures throughout this work that the reader would imagine that both Angel and Neusa are the same. One eg assumes that Angel would be a man, not a woman. 

The author writes - a fine sleight of hand really - "First Angel had some shopping to do. There was a good lingerie shop on Pueyrredon, expensive, but Neusa deserved the best". How would the reader suss out here that Angel was actually referring to himself...er, herself! 

Yet from a critical point of view, the concept does not ring true. Neusa is presented as a very unattractive, illiterate dithering, quite foolish individual; yet in reality she is sophisticated, canny, quite a genius. So maybe we should assume again that she is the greatest actress the world has ever seen with what she pulls off!

A horrific end for "The Controller" in the end; but how he deserves it... 

- Henry Ozogula

THE INTERPRETERS. By Wole Soyinka

'Wole Soyinka - one of the greatest writers Africa, and the world has ever seen. First African Nobel laureate. Celebrated poet. But also a sublime novelist, as this work proves. Actually the great man wrote this his debut novel many decades ago when he was still a young man. Here we concentrate on a coterie of articulate young men in particular as a nation - Nigeria- starts to stand on its own feet. Take a bow Sagoe, Egbo, Sekoni etc. Being Soyinka this is a brilliant, dense work with poetic undulations. From the start one might even give up when we read, "Metal on concrete jars my drink lobes". And what about the voluble Voidancy, "philosophy of shit" - the "business for latrine"? Farcical but gripping in its own way "farting like a beast " et al. A world class work indeed, this novel, with the author ventilating his wariness, his disdain for stultifying factors already pulling the African continent down from inception . Hark at the "moral turpitide", the hypocrisy, the smug sanctimonious elements already taking root. Apart from our intellectual young men here, broad strata of society is delineated here: eg the aristocracy, the hoi polloi, academics, demi-mondes, even albino.

The women in this novel are intriguing too, though the setting is many decades ago. Dehinwa, but Simi in particular. Simi comes across as an assertive, enigmatic, very seductive woman - in control even in respect of sex. Even the sexual details are brilliantly couched in poetic language here; yet Simi is in control. Life goes on here with ineluctable tragedies eg road accidents which the author has again been world famous for, for decades. Ravages on the road. Personally, unconsciously I find myself conflating this work with that of the talented SA writer, Deon Simphiwe Skade (author of A series of Undesirable events). In Deon 's work we are confronted too with young cerebral protagonists, with the author employing marmoreal poetic language echoing DH Lawrence. The Interpreters indeed...'