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Michael Holman
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Book
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Publisher | Abacus | ||
ISBN | 9780349120096 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jayne
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Synopsis
Charity Mupanga is the widowed owner of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot), a favourite meeting place for the movers and shakers of Kibera. While she can handle most challenges, from an erratic supply of Worcestershire sauce, the secret ingredient in her cooking, to the political tensions in East Africa's most notorious slum and a cholera outbreak that follows the freak floods in the state of Ubuntu, some threatening letters from London lawyers are beginning to overwhelm her. Well-meant but inept efforts to foil the lawyers by Edward Furniver, a former fund manager who runs Kibera's co-operative bank, bring Harrods International Bar to the brink of disaster, and Charity close to despair. In the nick of time an accidental riot, triggered by World Bank President Hardwick and Hardwicke's visit to the slum, coupled with some quick thinking by Titus Ntoto, the 14-year-old leader of Kibera's toughest gang, the Mboya Boys United Football Club, help Charity and Harrods to triumph in the end.
Review
Last Orders at Harrods by Michael Holman I thought when I first saw the book that it was about the famous store in London! When I started reading I discovered it was an African Tale about an international bar.
The way that tough street urchins and well meaning aid workers, and a corrupt dictator come to play a part in helping her to carry on with the name of Harrods on her bar. She says how dare a London Store, no matter how famous, claim exclusive use of the name of her late father Harrods Tangwenya?
Charity fights to save her business - and her fathers's legacy - in this devastatingly funny and yet brilliantly written and observed situation and also the way the novel looks at the acute type of life in contemporary Africa.
I also found the novel to show the serious side of Africa's trouble times and wonder how much of what happens over in the various parts of that large country are started by someone's show of force against an already thriving business, just because they do not like the name or want exclusive rights to the name and this turns our world upside down,
I loved the book but even I could not help getting frustrated for Charity, especially when the riots were sparked by a world bank visit.
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