Category Archives: Book and film reviews

Quartey’s detective series, now in its third title, featuring Darko Dawson is pretty good.  I enjoyed Murder at Cape Three Points.  The mystery here is a double-murder that involves the nascent offshore oil industry.  Lots of nice description of Takoradi, … Continue reading →

Have been very busy teaching introductory econometrics and associated lab to my Econ 41-42 students. Fun, but a lot of work. So many little glitches in R-Markdown. Great, useful program, but bringing students up to speed, and being the one … Continue reading →

Elliot for Christmas got Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer, an interesting noir homage graphic novel, set in the 1940s Hollywood and Pacific Theater.  If you are my age and a certain  income class you probably read a lot of … Continue reading →

Whitehead’s novel is good.  The central device of the “real” underground railroad is imaginative and deftly deployed.  The horrors of slavery, the perversity of “benign” slavery, the tenuous freedoms of Indiana, and the interior life of the main character, Cora, … Continue reading →

At a colleague’s Christmas party I had met the Stanford University economic historian Avner Grief, and he chatted with me for a long time about the role of clans in China and how that kin culture led to different institutional … Continue reading →

The refuge from a depressing present (Roch Marc Christian Kaboré since winning the election last year has done almost nothing, and Burkina Faso’s prospects for a vibrant economy and polity seem to fade with each passing week ) is in … Continue reading →

I have read Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga three times now, and on each reading the novel seems to get better!  The writing is really very good, and every few pages the narrator, Tambudzai, offers some clear and sharp insight … Continue reading →

Marlon James A Brief History of Seven Killings I finally got around to reading this and am almost over. It is a hard book to read. Multiple narration, Jamaican patois (with a lot of vocabulary that has to be inferred … Continue reading →

My Dad gave this to me to read after he had finished.  A good, serviceable, honest thriller.  Very earnest in some ways, but what can you expect from the snowy plains of Minnesota.  I enjoyed it, even as I longed … Continue reading →

Spoilers in this review. Sango Malo by Bassek ba Kobhio is one of my favorite films from Africa to use for introducing African economic development issues.  The film was released in the heady days of 1991 when a new generation … Continue reading →

Look Who’s Back – Excellent first hour, as Hitler suddenly reappears in contemporary Germany.  It grinds on as commentary on the media. Victoria – Two hour film, all one take, of a robbery gone awry. Technically it is wonderful to … Continue reading →

I arrived here last night, but so far all I have done for one day is talk about FAVL for about eight straight hours, and that is pretty boring for you blog readers, so instead I will give brief report … Continue reading →

Bill already gave this short novel by J.L. Carr the perfect short review, so there is not much I can add.  Makes you want to learn the names of plants and also become an art restorer, in your spare time.  … Continue reading →

I am about three years behind the times, but what a phenomenal novel.  Very small in its subject, the childhood friendship of two girls, from about ten to sixteen, growing up in Naples in the 1950s, the book nevetheless feels … Continue reading →

Over the weekend I read two Niq Mhlongo short novels, Dog Eat Dog and After Tears.  They are full of energy and vivid description.  Very sexually explicit. Gritty, dirty, occasionally funny, and of course very poignant.  The writing is not … Continue reading →

Over the past few weeks I have been reading very light fiction. Kate Atkinson’ Life After Life  is a “repeat time but not quite sure are repeating” alt-history English potboiler (mainly concentrating on the emotional ties within a family, and … Continue reading →

The novel is set in Jamaica and re-tells, through fiction, the attempted killing of Bob Marley in 1976. Great podcast interview in The Guardian. Here is the link.

I read This House is Not for Sale by E.C. Osondu over the weekend.  It is a collection of vignettes, organized around the conceit of “Grandpa’s house” on the outskirts of (maybe) Lagos, where misfits and miscreants share a common … Continue reading →