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the complete review - fiction

Burma Boy

by
Biyi Bandele

[an overview of the reviews and critical reactions]

general information | review summaries | links | about the author

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Why we haven't reviewed it yet:
Only available in the UK, haven't gotten our hands on a copy


Chances that we will review it:
Very good -- if we can get a copy of the book

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  Review Consensus:

  Funny, and interesting subject matter (African soldiers in Burma in WWII)

  From the Reviews:

• "As war novels go, it's a departure from the norm, leavening the gruesome depictions of combat with jokes, proverbs and stories from the lives the soldiers left behind." - Jonathan Gibbs, Financial Times
  
  
• "Next time it looks, the grand list of comic military characters in literature -- from Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy to Private Chonkin and the good soldier Sveijk -- will find its ranks swelled by another member. His name is Ali Banana and he is largely the creation of Nigerian-born playwright Biyi Bandele (…)Burma Boy is all the stronger for keeping its presentation of racial politics implicit rather than explicit." - Giles Foden, The Guardian
  
  
• "Yet there is no whiff of the lamp about this taut, tense and utterly riveting tale of comrades-in-arms undergoing conditions of such adversity as to defy belief. (…) Burma Boy explores to the full the inhumanity of modern warfare while celebrating the humanity of warriors caught up in it. It is a fine achievement, not least in giving the previously unheard West African Chindits a voice of their own." - Tony Gould, The Independent
  
  
• "Military thrills aside, it's also very funny. (…)The absurdity of war has been done before, of course, but what's invigorating about Bandele's novel is his fine detail, and the fresh perspective of the Africans who took part." - Robert Collins, The Observer
  
  
• "That the novel remains fresh is largely due to Bandele’s pungent prose, which intersperses explosive action with African anecdotes and idioms. Although racial tension is only lightly touched on, the author’s sharp awareness of ethnic identity is what makes the book original and moving. Highlighting the heroism and absurdity of war, it also illuminates a forgotten byway of African experience." - David Grylls, Sunday Times
  
  
• "The novel reads as a series of veterans' anecdotes, an invaluable record, insightful and entertaining, but also reticent when it comes to feelings of true horror." - Oliver Harris, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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Links:

• Jonathan Cape publicity page

• Financial Times
• The Guardian
• The Independent
• New Statesman
• The Observer (scroll down for review)
• Sunday Times

• Biyi Bandele at Contemporary Writers
• Profile at the Contemporary Africa Database
• Brief biography and some links (German)
• Review of Resurrections, a play by Bandele-Thomas

• The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond
• The Sympathetic Undertaker

• A Recollection of the War in Burma by George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here
• See Index of books relating to Africa under review
• See Index of Contemporary British fiction
• Thant Myint-U's Histories of Burma, The River of Lost Footsteps

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About the Author:

       Nigerian author 'Biyi Bandele-Thomas was born in 1967. He has written several acclaimed plays and novels.

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© 2007 the complete review

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