The White Masai

This book is a fascinating biography of one woman's experience of starting a new life in an alien culture. Her story begins when she meets her Masai on holiday and becomes obsessed by him. She leaves her home country Switzerland to become his wife and live in the depths of Kenya.

The back of the book has the quote from the Daily Mail 'dashing tale of love and adventure' and herein lies the fundamental reason as to why this book is so incredibly irritating. Hofman clearly is NOT in love with her masai. Throughout the book she keeps trying to create the impression to the reader that this is love with rather whimsical descriptions and lots of 'My darling husband' scattered generously throughout its pages. However beneath the fluff it is interesting when you look at her core descrptions of him and their relationship. She talks of being a 'breathtakingly beautiful man' 'he looks like a young god'. She later describes ' his sleek body' in detail. Infact at no point in this book are we presented with any evidence that she was 'in love', instead we are left with the impression that this is a holiday romance gone horribly wrong (eventually) and that she is obsessive and to be honest, a bit of a bunny-boiler. The GREATLY over-used description of her Masai as 'my darling' on almost every page left me wanting to extract my own eye balls, on more than one occaision and physically shout at Ms Hofman to 'WAKE UP AND GET A GRIP YOU SILLY WOMAN'.

I could not feel sympathy for her at any point in the book. Towards its end, there is a chapter which details her becoming very unwell and needing a significant stay in hospital for liver problems. She is warned not to eat meat as it will make her ill again but 'sneaks afew pieces' when her Masai comes to visit her and brings her a roasted goat leg. It makes her ill, resulting in a doctor screaming at her that if she didn't want to get better why is she in hospital in the first place. It is another example of her making a bad decision based on emotion rather than common sense. The best bit of this book comes when the doctor screams at her for being so stupid, a feeling echoed by myself for the entire book.

I would recommend this book as it is truely interesting, however it is not a book of one womans bravery, of following her heart and love. It is a story of an impressionable woman following her sex drive and making a life style choice based upon her labido and thats OK as we all make good and bad decisions in life. However the marketing of this book made me expect alot more inspiration and 'depth' from its pages, from this book which is apparently ' steeped in humanity' and a tale Hofman's bravery. Instead I was left with the feeling that I had been somewhat mislead and this is the story of a silly woman who made a rather silly choice.

The White Masai - Corinne Hofman - Interesting Read (0/0 people found this helpful)

A friend recommended this book to me after I returned from a fabulous holiday in Kenya. Not my usual style of reading but nether the less I found it impossible to put down. Read this in two days.

The author and main character Corinne is slightly annoying at times, but I feel the translation from German may have made this worse.

Her descriptive narrative of Kenya was wonderful to read after having just been there myself. The Kenyan people were the friendliest we have ever met and the country the most amazing we have ever been to. I loved reading about the culture of the Masai, and after visting a real life masai village I could really imagine myself there in her place.

I will definately read the sequel, wonder if she returns to her "darling"? Can't help thinking the woman was mad! giving up her successful business, wealthy lifestyle, friends and family for a man she didn't know and couldn't communicate with!

I would recommmend this book, simply to enjoy a taste of Kenya and another culture. I would suggest that anyone who has been to Kenya and loved it, might find as I did this is a must for when they return home, and their tan and memories are fading fast and they need a Kenya fix!!
Enjoy

Frustrating (1/2 people found this helpful)

This book was highly recommended by a friend, and taken at face value, as a view of a radically different culture, it was fascinating.
Unfortunately I found the first part of the book really difficult to get into because I couldn't believe the stupidity of leaving a stable life in Switzerland for an extremely basic life in Africa, just because the author took a fancy to a Masai warrior with whom she couldn't even communicate.
The next part of the book seemed to be constant journeying over atrocious roads for hours on end, just to obtain basic living requirements or necessary paperwork - how can such a basic way of life need so much paperwork??!!
And finally we suffer through the disintegration of the marriage caused by jealousy, which was very sad.

So, I have mixed views on this one; I agree wholeheartedly with the previous reviewer that the whole thing was crazy, but at the same time it was a fascinating insight into a culture that we can hardly believe still exists.

Undecided (1/2 people found this helpful)

In many ways I enjoyed the book because it was an interesting story and I was curious to see how it turned out, but the author got on my nerves most of the time - I just couldn't like her or sympathise with her when it all went wrong. She gives up her life in Switzerland to go and live with "her Masai", when they had hardly yet been able to have a conversation - they didn't have a common language at that point. So it appears that she based all her feelings for Lketinga on his looks! She hadn't visited his home village at that point so had absolutely no idea of what her life would be like. When later in the book she is surprised by the Samburu customs and Lketinga's character and reactions, I could only think "well, what did you expect?". Normally I'd admire someone who gave up their European life to go and live in Africa, but at least your love for the person you join, and your decision to make the move, should be based on having had decent conversations with the person and getting an understanding of his life, and not on the fact that he looks "magnificant". As the book goes I began to find Lketinga increasingly childlike, but then I realised this was because I was seeing him through her eyes and he may have been behaving normally for his culture. She just didn't have any idea of who he really was and had built him up to be someone he wasn't.

And was I the only reader who found her constant referring to him as "my darling" irritating? Perhaps this is something to do with the translation from German, because it's not something I come across in contempory English books.

Having said all this I may read her later books because I am curious to see what happened next.

Very disappointing (0/1 people found this helpful)

I was disappointed to find I didn't like Corinne at all and thought she was totally self-centred and self-indulgent. I wanted to sympathise with her feelings and desires, having been in the company of a magnetic Maasai warrior myself, but couldn't understand why she seemed to want to manipulate and change him.

Corinne Hofmann

Reader Reviews:

Interesting but such an irritating read (1/1 people found this helpful)

The White Masai - Corinne Hofman - Interesting Read (0/0 people found this helpful)

Frustrating (1/2 people found this helpful)

Undecided (1/2 people found this helpful)

Very disappointing (0/1 people found this helpful)

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