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Powell's Q&A, Q&A | December 13, 2009

Powell's Q&A: Norberto Fuentes

0 comments By Norberto Fuentes

Describe your latest project. Norton has just published The Autobiography of Fidel Castro, a novel that took seven years of my life to complete as I... Continue »

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1. 
   $19.56 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   The Autobiography of Fidel Castro

   Norberto Fuentes

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ody33ey, October 2, 2006

Who can believe there are characters with plain, simple wisdom anymore? Thank you Alexander McCall Smith for giving us Precious. Perhaps this character could only exist in Africa. She says that she would never take a pill that would make her an American. And she just gets smarter from there.
In Botswana where there are thorn trees everywhere
Mma Ramotswe uses her knowledge about people, her honesty and her keen observation to solve people's problems.
She is clear about snake danger, but she adapts her strategies to cope with them as part of the landscape - the same as she does for the snakes of humanity.
The unfolding of the chapters has an underlying continuity in building the main characters, but there is a charm in having small, contained stories, that do not tax. Precious goes down so easy. However, the perpetrators in Africa can be of a different stripe than the ones Westerners usually meet; Mma Ramotswe is qualified.
The language seems ordinary enough, like everyday conversation, yet there is a resolution of thought not commonly found in mystery fiction. And yes, some of it made me laugh out loud.
Also, I want to thank Alexander McCall Smith for giving me a new character, other than that grimly sinuous, ambiguously human creation, seemingly ineradicable, from Tolkein, with the name Precious. Precious Ramotswe. Precious, I'd love to sit on your verandah for an afternoon bush tea.

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