The Expedition to the Baobab Tree: A Novel
"This mini-masterpiece is less a novel than an intimate monologue illuminating the nature of slavery, oppression, womanhood, identity, Africa, and nature itself. . . . 25 years after its introduction to English-speaking audiences, this tale still proves moving and vibrant." -- Publishers Weekly(starred review)“illuminating, in musical description and sharp images. . . This slim book takes a place high in my own pantheon of beautiful novels come to us out of Africa.” -- Alan Cheuse on NPR's All Things Considered"A meditation on humanity, mortality and time. A challenging, compelling work." -- Kirkus Reviews"[The Expedition to the Baobab Tree] left me entranced and devastated. . . At the very least, this slim work (not a novella, as that category seemingly exists just to diminish the importance of short literature of quality) should be on every postcolonial studies reading list. . . The frequently hallucinatory and fantastical prose-poetry, while inventive, is not merely a linguistic flourish; it is a political statement, the fierce rejection of “Western,” specifically patriarchal, practices of reading the world." -- Charles Shafaieh, The Daily Beast"An astonishing achievement."--The Star(South Africa)"A truly remarkable contribution, both for the lyrical quality of its prose and for its boldly imaginative theme."--World Literature Today"Lyrical ... dramatic ... epic. Of the living, active poets in Afrikaans she is the greatest."--André Brink, author ofPhilidaandA Dry White Season"A compelling, richly textured fable."--Christopher Hope, author ofShooting Angels"Let me immediately say that this book gripped me from the very first paragraph and I could not put it down till I closed it late last night, deeply moved, with the realization: Today I read a great work."--Audrey Blignault, South African Broadcasting Corporation"A poignant reflection on death and the psyche of a human being."--Rapport"An evocative historical novella."-- Breyten Breytenbach"A work of brilliance, breathtaking, a relentless work that pushes the reader through a forced-open doorway between worlds, and then through another doorway, and then another, and then back the way she came, and then shows how all boundaries are dark illusions, labels we force onto categories of experience in lives that can’t be planned, or that can’t be planned by us." -- Elizabeth Bachner  "From its stunning first lines to its beautiful last, J.M. Coetzee's brilliant Englishing of Wilma Stokenstrom's The Expedition to the Baobab Tree had its tendrils wrapped tight around me. Rarely in a novel––and never in one this slender––have I encountered such power, such tenderness, such elegance, such ferocity." -- Laird Hun"A slave woman remembers her life as her survival becomes more uncertain in the African grasslands. The knowledge that she can make the decision about where her body will go is simultaneously liberating and frightening. Readers become one in the mind and imagination with her as she sorts through the meaning of her lifelong bondage in the fortress of a baobab tree."-- World Literature Today"This J.M. Coetzee-translated novel of a young African girl’s life, memory, and survival by one of the most important writers on the continent is one of the year’s most important books in translation" -- Flavorwire