Wednesday, August 27, 2008

White Man


Whiteman by Tony D'Souza.
Harvest Books (2007), Paperback, 288 pages

Adama Diomande (Jack Diaz is his real name, Adama Diomande is the name bestowed on him by his village) is the first person narrator of the book is in Worodougou, a small Muslim village in the north of the Ivory Coast, to educate villagers about AIDS. He finds himself coming to terms with life in a different culture, sans basic necessities, sans even sex. The loneliness and the desperation leads Adama to make some questionable choices - he takes up with a prostitute and his neighbor's wife, and in the biggest irony of all, doesn't use condoms with them. And manages to stay HIV free. If the ostensible message of the book was safe sex, then by those standards this book is a failure. But interesting read overall.

(Review crossposted on LibraryThing)

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