Set on an imaginary island off the coast of West Africa against a composite background of African postcolonial traumas (amongst other things, there are deliberate echoes of the conflicts in Biafra, Mali, and Western Sahara), this is a kind of Burnt out case story about an American artist, adrift in Africa after the collapse of her family, who finds a sort of resolution to her life in a quixotic — and disastrous —attempt to help refugees. Van Dis manages to address all the classic problems of the westerner in Africa without ever seeming unduly didactic. This is all "our" fault, but that doesn't mean that we have any right to claim to have answers to the problems of the countries the greed of our ancestors messed up, or to expect our solutions to work. Nice, if uncomfortable reading. ( )

I got lost completely in this book, the story, the memories, the descriptions of nature, decay, the drinking, the drunk hallucinations.
I finished it, but unlike other short stories, this one was way too long for me. ( )

One of this thin books, lying around for a while. Perfect for a lazy Sunday. And the author is presenting a program about Indonesia, starting last weekend. Good moment to read this book, although it is about Africa. Set on an isolated island belonging to an unmentioned country where north and south fight each other. Susan ended here after discovering the world and wants to help a hand. Because we, the outsiders, only observer...
The book is about 15 years old, but the story holds, looking at the current situation in the middle east and of course also Africa.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2012/03/palmwijn.html ( )

Boekenweekgeschenk 1996. Na een leven vol omzwervingen belandt een oudere vrouw op een eiland voor de kust van Afrika. Niets kan haar nog treffen, ze zoekt sensaties en staat voor alles open. Tot ze, in een dramatische confrontatie met het lot van de eilandbewoners, de intensiteit van het leven hervindt. ( )