Love and Fatigue in America

The writing style is accessible and smart; complex without being confusing; insightful and reflective without weighing heavily. A great read!!!What makes reading this novel so enjoyable is the adept weaving of history -- Zanzibar has a complex history, and it is told through the stories of the narrator, a young woman -- as well as via an insightful grasp of the contemporary condition -- of mobility, of otherness, of migration; it is both the tale of an individual, and the story of millions. The author Roger King uses a wonderful method, of the narrator thinking about both past and present -- to bring us the careful, reflective details of an individual's life while at the same time painting a picture of the complex past (and present) difficulties of Zanzibar (particularly relevant given recent international press attention to this island archipelago off Tanzania). The narrator, a young Goan (Indian and Portuguese descent; many settled in Zanzibar) woman who has recently come to the U.S. to teach, relates both delightfully concrete details of her life in Vermont and her past in Zanzibar, all the while revealing a very reflective story of personal changes and growth, wrangling with her past and present, as an "exotic" immigrant to the U.S. The weaving of past and present, of concrete and cerebral, make this a wonderfully rich story, both intensely personal and more broadly historical.

One of the most grabbing, well written books I've read in a long time. It was especially intriguing as I read it while on holiday in Zanzibar! A definite read for anyone going there, and for anyone interested in a really good read.

The wanderings of Marcella D'Souza, the protagonist of Roger King's brilliant new novel, have begun in her native Zanzibar; taken her to the bustling, multi-ethnic streets of Bayswater, London; and finally deposited her in a quiet college town in snowy Vermont, where she has been assigned to teach a vaguely-defined course in "multi-cultural studies." Looking back on her odyssey, she has this observation: "I think I have the making of a new theory here. Maybe these days, everything is so international, there's always an advantage in being from somewhere else. What is important is not local knowledge, but foreign knowledge. If the whole world is in motion, then the world's displaced are those who stay at home." "Those who stay at home" have had little role to play in Marcella's world. As a naive, ambitious newcomer to London--the New York Times calls her a "modern-day Candide"--she falls in with a group of equally peripatetic friends, people whose racial identity, national origin, and even religious affiliations can only be expressed via a long series of adjectives: "I've got it," an earnest British friend remarks of Marcella herself, "You're a Goan Indian Portuguese Arab African of Catholic Moslem parentage." This group of friends, living a hustling and often exuberant existence in the immigrants' netherworld of Thatcher's England, contains elements that the reader rightfully suspects will pull Marcella into dangerous waters. And indeed, from the novel's first page we know that she will end up serving time in prison for an unnamed crime. But the novel unfolds with such luminous grace, effortlessly moving us from scenes of the past, into the present, and back again yet more years, that we surrender to its shifting timeline without impatience. Instead, our knowledge of Marcella and her world becomes more richly layered. Our deepening understanding makes the novel's final revelations far more satisfying then if they had been disclosed earlier. A gloriously enjoyable novel, and one that adds to the reader's perception of a world that exists, if below the radar, in the most ordinary corners of the U.S. and Europe today.

If the shape of a life is determined by what one chooses to notice, maybe its trajectory is determined by what one fails to notice. In a world where nothing and no one are what they seem, Marcella D'Souza, intelligent, beautiful and determined, flees the haunted shores of her native Zanzibar to build a new life amidst an ad hoc family of ambitious immigrants in London. In this politically volatile, multi-cultural landscape where no one truly "belongs" Marcella finds love and an unexpected sense of belonging. The life she designs is satisfying and successful, but ultimately falls prey to the hidden designs of others. Multiple schemes, misapprehended systems and coincidence conspire, collide and explode into chaos. But Roger King, through his intriguing protagonist, seems to be saying that even chaos is illusive. "Disorder is only order we can't see, and coincidences are the evidence." Once betrayed, imprisoned and presently living in quiet exile, Marcella is once again reinventing herself in a foreign world, this time as a professor of Multi-cultural studies at a small Vermont College. From this temporary sanctuary she explores the graceful havoc of her personal history in a voice both poignant and utterly devoid of self-pity. "I had failed to read the signs. I had looked up and out when I should have looked down and in. I watched my front when I should have watched my back. I only noticed that...I failed to correctly evaluate... overlooked... misheard...mistook...I had only myself to blame." But personal responsibility, like personal history, is not so easily traced in a world of blurred borders.Roger King is an adept magician weaving an intricate web in time. Marcella's tumultuous history casts sticky threads into an uncertain future and her present is delicately balanced between the two. The drama that unfolds when timelines meet is powerful -- it's unpredictable and yet somehow manages to deliver a mysterious sense of inevitability. Along the way, King's complex assortment of characters, all enchanting and unsavory in varying degrees, are rendered with profound compassion and insight. It's deeply satisfying reading.

This is a wonderful novel about a woman's experience in the world. As the "San Francisco Chronicle" stated, "Nearly every page crackles with some fresh, sharp and true observation. To use a word seldom applied to serious fiction,The Girl From Zanzibar is a delight."