![]() ![]() ![]() Evaristo brings off her trick a little closer to home. The late American writer John Hersey tried turning the tables like this in his 1965 novel "White Lotus," in which he had folks from Arizona taken as slaves by the marauding Chinese and sold into bondage in China. He's a slave dealer on a raid in the northern British Isles to find cargo to sell in the New World in this alternative history by Anglo-African novelist Bernardine Evaristo. That's how the speech of some English peasants sounds to the ears of a roving African - or Aphrikan, as folks from that continent are called in this novel. A language without the clicks, clucks, clacks and !tsks of normal speech sounded dreary beyond belief, more akin to the low monotonous moan of cattle than the exuberant sounds of human communication." "As they crept in a cowardly way toward us, I heard them whispering rapidly in their nonsensical 'language.' This too was farcical. ![]() By Bernardine Evaristo (Riverhead Books 269 pages $24.95) ![]()
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