Zanzibar

Unfortunately, much of Zanizbar's power is diluted by a completely unconvincing love story. Quiller and al-Khidr are marginalised by the unprepossessing Nick Karolides and Miranda Powers, who, although they drive much of the narrative, are little more than stock thriller characters. Powers is a feisty female who adored her late father. Karolides, also mourning the loss of his father, is a sensitive yet hunky environmental scientist. Their emotional range is further hampered by the fact that Foden equips them with Mall Rat-style--"Man, she looked good", "big way", "the old guy, he was really nice"--American parlance. It's almost as if a cigar-chewing Hollywood mogul with an eye on the film rights has demanded a "love interest" and Foden has duly obliged. Despite its faults it's good to see a writer at least attempting to wrestle, if a little didactically, with Islamic fundamentalism and American Imperialism. --Travis Elborough

Reader Reviews:

what a bore (0/0 people found this helpful)

Read till the end of Chapter 12 and decided I had more important things to do with my life than finish this badly written drivel. Formulaic characters forecast the plot - one who moans on and on about his lost arm ("...but the bad feelings were still there, his fist was still clenched. His only fist." Aaaaaaahhh. This is appalling writing. Read last three paragraphs of Ch 12 for a wonderful wince; two who moan about their lost fathers. Oh! gives us a break...or better still some LeCarre.

Caught up in an Al-Qaeda plot (1/2 people found this helpful)

What is most impressive about this novel is Foden's knowledge and the additional research he must have done for this book. He knows a great deal about East Africa, and there are sensuous descriptions of skies, seas and flora. He knows about marine life, about boats and diving apparatus, about the structure of the United States intelligence services and some of the methods they use, and about Al-Qaeda. The first 200 pages (about half the novel) are a rather leisurely but very readable display of all that knowledge, and an equally leisurely introduction, in separate sections, of the principal invented characters who will be brought together later on and who will be involved in the real historical events of the 1998 Al-Qaeda bombing of the American embassy in Dar es Salam. In the meantime, knowing that we are reading a thriller, there are in that first half a couple of episodes which raise expectations in us that something dramatic is imminent. It is not imminent; but when it comes, it comes suddenly and ferociously, and lasts for some forty pages. After that, for the next 70 pages, the pace slackens again, and the plot narrative is interrupted by long political passages, detailing the past history of Al-Qaeda (all a lot more familiar to us since 9/11 than they were when most of the book was written) and the American response to the embassy bombing. Then, before some didactic musing near the end of the book, there are some 30 pages in which a variety of characters stalk each other; and these will be the climax of the film that is likely to be made of the book. It is unlikely to be as good a film as they made of the author's first novel, The Last King of Scotland; but then that was also a much better book.

Interesting reality-based thriller (1/2 people found this helpful)

In 1998 Al-Qaida terrorists attacked the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In this book Giles Foden, who specilizes in turning African historical events into 'faction' novels, takes these attacks as the basis of a thriller in which a number of apparently unconnected stories, in which the protagonists (a Greek-American oceanologist, an intelligence veteran with only one arm, an ambitious young civil servant and and African boy whose parents are murdered) are finally all part of one big story that cost the lives of more than 200 people. Giles Foden gives a good description of the wheelings and dealings of African (and American) bureaucracy, but also a very interesting and not much known insight into the birth of Al-Qaida, when it was still an American-sponsored resistance movement in Russian-occupied Afghanistan. Not exactly an episode of history that is very fondly remembered by the American government. Definitely worth a read.

An interesting and poetic read - with the odd thrill (0/1 people found this helpful)

Having read Ladysmith, I was keen to read this novel. However I did not find it as gripping as his previous work. Foden's scene setting is good and his character descriptions are acceptable. Where he really scores though are both in his descriptions of places, coral reefs sunsets etc and his demonstration that members of Al Quaida are real people with understandable motivations. This was a refreshing element. All in all a satisfying read that throws an interesting light on recent political events in this increasingly polarised world

draft for a forthcoming movie? Disappointing novel (7/7 people found this helpful)

Giles Foden is a journalist and his first two novels were very promising. The Last King of Scotland, a fascinating study of Idi Amin and the charisma of power and corruption - and one of the best first novels of the 1990s; Ladysmith, a fine siege novel. On the strength of these two novels Foden was proclaimed by Allan Massie one of the best young British novelists. However, while the big breakthrough as a literary novelist awaits it is customary for promising British novelists to turn their attention to cinema. One cannot blame them. There is little money to be made in literary fiction, even as one of the best young British novelists. So, a young man's fancy will turn to thoughts of big name actors, big budget action thrillers, and the end result sees novels by numbers. Sadly Giles Foden seems to have followed the same path as Philip Kerr.

This novel deals with al-Qaida and the US embassy bombings of the late 1990s. The novel was substantially completed before 11.9.2001 and its content evidences the diligence of Foden's researches into ther organisation (although there is a didacticism here that is not present in his earlier novels). It looks at the early links between bin Laden's organisation and the American CIA, one of the three central western characters being a CIA agent involved in training al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. This strand is for me the most successful part of the novel. Quiller is an interesting character, battling his past failure, trying to make recompense. He echoes those characters that populate Foden's previous novels (although even aspects of his character - such as his missing limb - feel like caricature). However, Quiller is off centre too often. Instead the plot centres around a young American marinne biologist Nick, (Memo to central casting - man on a mission, driven, unable to commit: promising for Ben Affleck?), and his sometime love interest Miranda, a diplomat at the US embassy in Tanzania (memo to central casting - attractive, strong woman, stumbling into love, powerful scenes when on solo investigation. All scantily clad sections wholly essential to plot due to extreme hear: Try J-LO?). Neither wholly convinces, and the love story feels like a pitch for a movie.

I wonder if the book was rushed out to remain topical. It could have benefited from a longer gestation, the paring down of the plot, the building up of the characters.

The pages keep turning, but a week after I've finished the novel there are few scenes that remain in the mind, no long lasting impression. One could say it was perfect airline reading, and one can see a big budget all action movie, if it were not for the problem that Foden makes clear the complicity of the US in the development of bin Laden's movement.

On the strength of Foden's previous work I will look forward to his next novel, but I don't think I'll be revisiting Zanzibar.

Giles Foden

Editorial Review: