Synopses & Reviews
A thrilling, epic story from a major new international talent.
Mamo and LaMamo are twin brothers living in the small Nigerian village of Keti, where their domineering father controls their lives. With high hopes the twins attempt to flee from home, but only LaMamo escapes successfully and is able to live their dream of becoming a soldier who meets beautiful women. Mamo, the sickly, awkward twin, is doomed to remain in the village with his father. Gradually he comes out of his father's shadow and gains local fame as a historian, and, using Plutarch's Parallel Lives as his model, he embarks on the ambitious project of writing a "true" history of his people. But when the rains fail and famine rages, religious zealots incite the people to violence and LaMamo returns to fight the enemy at home.
A novel of ardent loyalty, encroaching modernity, political desire, and personal liberation, Measuring Time is a heart-wrenching history of Nigeria, portrayed through the eyes of a single family.
Review
"Few messages could resonate more strongly in these troubled times. An unusually rich and rewarding novel, which in its (many) best pages becomes something very like a native African Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A] flawlessly written tale....Habila's writing is powerful, gripping, and poetic without becoming sentimental. Habila is a fantastic author with a brilliant future; highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"[P]enetrating....Best of all is the realistic drama of tradition and modernity the evils of both but also the rich possibilities that come with their complex interaction." Booklist
Review
"In the end the book meanders to a halt, as if overwhelmed by its own despondency. But this somehow seems a fitting end to a melancholy narrative of a fight against decay, a struggle for hope in a cynical world." Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Although the dichotomies this novel sets up are hardly subtle, Mr. Habila writes with unequivocal fondness for his characters, their hopes and dreams." Dallas Morning News
Review
"Measuring Time is altogether perkier than Waiting for an Angel, where Habila's vocabulary is shot through with terror of Abacha's death squads....Yet in spite of this it lacks the earlier novel's bracing wit....Measuring Time is uneven, but it is still compelling to see how Helon Habila awakens consciousness of this possibility in his would-be revisionist historian." Anthony Cummins, The Times Literary Supplement (read the entire TLS review)
Synopsis
Twin brothers growing up in the tiny Nigerian village of Keti, where their lives are dominated by their controlling father, Mamo and LaMamo are separated when LaMamo escapes to pursue his dream of becoming a soldier, but when religious zealots incite the people to violence, he returns home to battle the enemy and to be reunited with his brother, now a renowned historian. Original..
Synopsis
A novel of ardent loyalty, encroaching modernity, political desire, and personal liberation, Measuring Time is a heart-wrenching history of Nigeria, portrayed through the eyes of a single family.
Synopsis
Mamo and LaMamo are twin brothers living in the small Nigerian village of Keti, where their domineering father controls their lives. With high hopes the twins attempt to flee from home, but only LaMamo escapes successfully and is able to live their dream of becoming a soldier who meets beautiful women. Mamo, the sickly, awkward twin, is doomed to remain in the village with his father. Gradually he comes out of his father's shadow and gains local fame as a historian, and, using Plutarch's Parallel Lives as his model, he embarks on the ambitious project of writing a true history of his people. But when the rains fail and famine rages, religious zealots incite the people to violence--and LaMamo returns to fight the enemy at home.
A novel of ardent loyalty, encroaching modernity, political desire, and personal liberation, Measuring Time is a heart-wrenching history of Nigeria, portrayed through the eyes of a single family.
Synopsis
A thrilling, epic story from a major new international talent.
About the Author
Helon Habila is the internationally renowned author of Waiting for an Angel, which won both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing. He lives in the United Kingdom.