art, academic and non-fiction books
publishers’ Eastern and Central European representation

Name your list

Log in / Sign in

ta strona jest nieczynna, ale zapraszamy serdecznie na stronę www.obibook.com /// this website is closed but we cordially invite you to visit www.obibook.com

ISBN: HB: 9780857426949

Seagull Books

February 2020

216 pp.

20.3x12.7 cm

HB:
£14,99
QTY:

Categories:

Divine Song

"Everything starts with a song and everything ends with another song", says the narrator of "The Divine Song". Paris is an old Sufi cat who keeps watch over his brilliant yet pathetic master, Sammy Kamau-Williams, the Enchanter. In Sammy, we recognize the African American singer-composer, poet, and novelist Gil Scott-Heron who is best known for his song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".

"The Divine Song" takes us from the shores of Africa to Sammy's ancestors' arrival in the Americas in the hold of the slave ships. From there, Abdourahman A. Waberi takes the characters from Tennessee – under the tutelage of Lili Williams, Sammy's beloved African-born grandmother – to New York and the concert halls of Paris and Berlin, wherever blues and jazz find an enchanted audience. African tales, religious practices, segregation, the civil rights movement, addiction, and jail – Sammy's life comes to encompass the whole of the African American experience. At a time when social and racial divisions have yet again come into sharp relief, this lyrical novel by one of African literature's rising stars is necessary reading for anyone who celebrates the resilience of art.

About the Author

Abdourahman A. Waberi is a novelist, essayist, poet, and professor of literature at George Washington University. He is the author of "The Land without Shadows"," In the United States of Africa", and "Passage of Tears", the last also published by Seagull Books.