Synopses & Reviews
An utterly original debut novel from the prize-winning author of
Esther Stories takes a young American to a school in Africa, where he falls for a woman of far deeper experience.
First she came. Then she came back.
Set in Namibia just after independence in the early 1990s, Peter Orner's first novel is a chronicle of the long days, short loves, and cold nights at Goas, an all-boys Catholic primary school so deep in the veld that "even the baboons feel sorry for us." Though physically isolated in semi-desert beneath a relentless sun, the people of Goas create an alternate, more fertile universe through the stories they tell each other.
The book's central character is Mavala Shikongo, a combat veteran who fought in Namibia's long war for independence against South Africa. She has recently returned to the school with a child, but no husband. Mavala is modern, restless, and driven, in sharp contrast to conservative Goas. All the male teachers (including a bumbling but observant volunteer from Cincinnati) try not to fall in love with her. Everyone fails immediately and miserably. This extraordinary first novel explores the history of a place through the stories of its people. But above all it's about the fleetingness of love and the endurance of fellowship.
Review
"The novel is more situation than story, but there are scenes that will stay with you forever." Booklist
Review
"Orner has a gift for language. He writes with confident economy, evoking and peopling his parched, lonely world with patient detail." New York Times
Review
"It is a book of astonishing beauty....Orner has joined the first rank of American writers." Boston Globe
Synopsis
When Mavala Shikongo deserted them, the teachers at the boys' school in Goas weren't surprised. How could they be? She was too beautiful, too powerful, and too mysterious for their tiny, remote, and arid world. They knew only one essential fact about their departed colleague: she was a combat veteran of Namibia's brutal war for independence. When Mavala returns to Goas with a baby son, all are awed by her boldness. The teachers try hard, once again, not to fall in love with her. They fail, immediately and miserably, especially the American volunteer, Larry Kaplanski.
About the Author
Peter Orner was born in Chicago in 1968. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1990, he taught for eighteen months in a rural Catholic mission in Namibia, received a law degree and practiced as juvenile public defender in Boston, and then enrolled in the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop.