... a rollicking, rumbustious and slyly mischievous Candide for our times ... the scattergun satire of this scurrilous picaresque takes no prisoners ... Condé spares no one. The rug is repeatedly jerked from under us with a mixture of awkward truths and ironic swipes ... Condé’s provocative fun cloaks a challenge: is there not more than a little bad faith in the way the west earnestly seeks the roots of jihadi radicalism while turning a blind eye to the flagrant ills that add rocket fuel to its meretricious allure? The novel’s parting shot, 'you can take it or leave it', leaves the ball squarely in our court.
Maryse Condé’s The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana is a gripping story ... Rich atmospheres are established ... Gritty, dank surroundings are contrasted with the clothes, neighborhoods, and homes of the well-off ... a searing literary portrait of the exploitation of immigrants, the corruption of governments, and the powerful emergence of radicalism, with astute commentary on how these elements breed trauma, generation after generation.
Few writers are as skilled at illustrating the ways in which personal abuses of power are not just the result but the praxis of cultural domination ... The conceit is deceptively straightforward ... The book is a reflection on the dangers of binary thinking, and the Wilde line 'Each man kills the thing he loves' serves as a kind of refrain for the mutually destructive passions between West and East, black and white, purist and pervert ... One is never on steady ground with Condé; she is not an ideologue, and hers is not the kind of liberal, safe, down-the-line morality that leaves the reader unimplicated.
The narrative voice is a collective and elegiac 'we' that sweeps across epochs, taking in slavery, colonialism, fundamentalism, islander psychology, migration and the pitfalls of ideology. Always, a deep insight into contradictions of race, class, religion and nation ... The self-reflexivity of the novel has the narrator pausing regularly to qualify or clarify a point or other for the benefit of the reader. A wise storyteller with an expansive eye on the characters and the situations in which they find themselves, and yet demurring, rejecting omniscience, admitting to knowing only what the communal 'we' knows ... Beating in the novel’s heart is orality, carrying with it the breath of histories, literatures and languages of Africa and the Caribbean ... In constantly drawing attention to its form as narrative constructed through a process of selection shaped by the communal voice, The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana is clear as to its loyalties ... Condé makes clear, at every point: this is the story we are telling, the perspective in focus, the world we are centring – it is the subaltern that speaks.
Condé’s scope is expansive: cosmic, global, and deeply personal. The result is a story from the perspective of the Global South that enthralls as it explores the urgent economic and cultural contradictions of postcolonialism, globalization, class, and alienation ... Ivan and Ivana are at once fated — and free. And that is The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana’s admirable imaginative strength: the story embraces these contradictory realities, it does not run away from them ... a splendid example of this kind of sharp-eyed analysis; it deals with the fluid pursuit of meaning and identity in a postcolonial period, the bedeviling clash between the abstract claims of historical justice and the concrete pressures of personal choice.
Award-winning author Condé...is a gifted storyteller, and nowhere is this more evident than in her latest novel ... Set during the Charlie Hedbo attacks, this is a fast-paced saga that reveals a seldom-addressed period of African history. Condé’s writing is both lyrical and textured, and showcases her tremendous talents.
