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去往猴面包树的旅程
为了一座神秘的城市，一个奴隶女孩陪同她爱恋的主人和一队人，从非洲东海岸港口城市向内陆进发。但这一群人在陌生的地形里迷了路，一个接一个地消失。奴隶女孩，唯一的幸存者，在一棵猴面包树的裂隙中得到了庇护。在这里，她第一次完整拥有了自己的时间、自己的身体和自己的思想。她孤独地向猴面包树低语，追溯自己所有的过往，也反思自己的存在和意义，在这里重构自己的时间，与大自然共存，最后进行自我的殒灭。
264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
19 people are currently reading
660 people want to read
About the author
Wilma Stockenstrom
5 books3 followers Wilma Johanna Stockenström (born 7 August 1933) is a South African writer, translator, and actor. She writes in the Afrikaans language, and along with Sheila Cussons, Elisabeth Eybers, Antjie Krog and Ina Rousseau, she is one of the leading female writers in the language.
She was born in Napier in the Overberg district of South Africa. After finishing high school, she studied at Stellenbosch University, where she obtained a BA in Drama in 1952. She moved to Pretoria in 1954, and married the Estonian linguist Ants Kirsipuu. Stockenström has lived in Cape Town since 1993.
She is one of a handful of writers to have won the Hertzog prize in two different categories. She won it first for poetry in 1977 and then for fiction in 1991. Her 1981 novel Die kremetartekspedisie was translated into English by the Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee under the title The Expedition to the Baobab Tree. Her work has also been translated into Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Turkish and Swedish.
She was born in Napier in the Overberg district of South Africa. After finishing high school, she studied at Stellenbosch University, where she obtained a BA in Drama in 1952. She moved to Pretoria in 1954, and married the Estonian linguist Ants Kirsipuu. Stockenström has lived in Cape Town since 1993.
She is one of a handful of writers to have won the Hertzog prize in two different categories. She won it first for poetry in 1977 and then for fiction in 1991. Her 1981 novel Die kremetartekspedisie was translated into English by the Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee under the title The Expedition to the Baobab Tree. Her work has also been translated into Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Turkish and Swedish.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
May 13, 2021
i waited too long to write my review for this book, and for that i apologize, because my memory of it has become a little jumbled. which, in a way, is fitting, since this is such a nonlinear and confusing splay of a book following an unnamed slave woman in south africa throughout her life: her horrifying capture and the destruction of her village as a young girl, her various owners and their treatment of her as she is moved around and sold, her rescue by a man she sees as a protector, but calls "the stranger," and her retreat into a baobab tree after she is the sole survivor of an expedition gone terribly wrong, where she ultimately descends into a madness of confusion and fragmented images. also, a death by crocodile.
it's a little embarrassing to admit that i was frequently confused reading this book. i used to be such a good reader. but this book, told in a stream-of-consciousness rush, by a woman who has been psychologically compromised by all that she has seen, doesn't make it easy. it was tricky sometimes to distinguish from what part of her life each scene was relating, and while there were moments of narrative clarity, and instances of beautiful and alternately lyrical and stark prose, at the end of it, i didn't feel like it contributed all that much to the canon of slave narratives. i have read this kind of story before: the horrors of slavery, its alienation and dehumanization, the moments of hope and peace and small reliefs, the cruel owner, the lustful owner, the kind owner, the preferential treatment that makes life easier but breeds jealousy and suspicion among other slaves…
and unfortunately, i was only able to read this in bits and pieces because stupid life got in the way, so that might have contributed to my confusion - this is a book best read in one long gulp. i apologize to you, book, for not reading you in the right way, and please accept my three stars as a token of my regret.
come to my blog!
it's a little embarrassing to admit that i was frequently confused reading this book. i used to be such a good reader. but this book, told in a stream-of-consciousness rush, by a woman who has been psychologically compromised by all that she has seen, doesn't make it easy. it was tricky sometimes to distinguish from what part of her life each scene was relating, and while there were moments of narrative clarity, and instances of beautiful and alternately lyrical and stark prose, at the end of it, i didn't feel like it contributed all that much to the canon of slave narratives. i have read this kind of story before: the horrors of slavery, its alienation and dehumanization, the moments of hope and peace and small reliefs, the cruel owner, the lustful owner, the kind owner, the preferential treatment that makes life easier but breeds jealousy and suspicion among other slaves…
and unfortunately, i was only able to read this in bits and pieces because stupid life got in the way, so that might have contributed to my confusion - this is a book best read in one long gulp. i apologize to you, book, for not reading you in the right way, and please accept my three stars as a token of my regret.
come to my blog! 
August 28, 2017
I appreciated this book--- but I didn't love-LOVE it.
It's a book about slaves - one particular slave hides inside a boabab tree.
She had several slave masters- was abused sexually- explores her history - and who she is because of her life.
The writing is complex - much is lovely - but it's not an easy flowing book to read -- I had a hard time understanding the 'depths- of - purpose' - for all the uniqueness.
"I reached the baobab with beating heart and a stabbing pain in the spleen that doubled me over, and I squatted in the opening and saw the rosette patterns that first raindrops make as they hit the dust".
In the presence of suffering...this young slave was teaching us the secrets of joy...
Which is the beauty I took away from
this book....
but it was challenging to follow the stream of consciousness type writing.
3.5
It's a book about slaves - one particular slave hides inside a boabab tree.
She had several slave masters- was abused sexually- explores her history - and who she is because of her life.
The writing is complex - much is lovely - but it's not an easy flowing book to read -- I had a hard time understanding the 'depths- of - purpose' - for all the uniqueness.
"I reached the baobab with beating heart and a stabbing pain in the spleen that doubled me over, and I squatted in the opening and saw the rosette patterns that first raindrops make as they hit the dust".
In the presence of suffering...this young slave was teaching us the secrets of joy...
Which is the beauty I took away from
this book....
but it was challenging to follow the stream of consciousness type writing.
3.5
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October 30, 2019You could read this book in one go, perhaps you will, but that would be greedy.
There is a story already implicit in the author's name Stockenström. She like Penelope Fitzgerald became a published writer in later life, wikipeadia, damning with faint praise, describes her as "one of the leading female writers in the language" (ie Afrikaans). Here you can read an excerpt.
The novel is a narrative (naturally) narrated (helpfully) by an unnamed woman who almost finally says of herself "I was really a mistress and mother and goddess" (p.112), all of which seems to be true enough, the problem is not of an unreliable narrator, but of an ignorant one, seized in childhood and carried off into slavery. She doesn't know much and from her narrative I am not sure if this is historical fiction or African fantasy, since the author does not make this clear I guess it does not matter.
We find the narrator living in a Baobab tree, and her narrative tells us how she lives there and how she came to get there. The Baobab probably seeding this thought in my mind, but it strikes me now that the narrative is perhaps a retelling of The Little Prince, but from an intersectional perspective, taunt with the world's sufferings - this is a tale mostly of enslaved women and eunuchs and the men who own them, inevitably perhaps it reminds me of Heart of Darkness with its journey from the coast deep into the interior - in this case giving an opportunity for the narrator like Kurtz to journey into their own interior. I think I could read it repeatedly, and each me discover a different book between the same covers. It's pretty fantastic too in its storytelling, a fable, passing strange as any story involving a mistress, mother and goddess living in a Baobab tree really ought to be. I fear to say anything more in case of .
There is a story already implicit in the author's name Stockenström. She like Penelope Fitzgerald became a published writer in later life, wikipeadia, damning with faint praise, describes her as "one of the leading female writers in the language" (ie Afrikaans). Here you can read an excerpt.
The novel is a narrative (naturally) narrated (helpfully) by an unnamed woman who almost finally says of herself "I was really a mistress and mother and goddess" (p.112), all of which seems to be true enough, the problem is not of an unreliable narrator, but of an ignorant one, seized in childhood and carried off into slavery. She doesn't know much and from her narrative I am not sure if this is historical fiction or African fantasy, since the author does not make this clear I guess it does not matter.
We find the narrator living in a Baobab tree, and her narrative tells us how she lives there and how she came to get there. The Baobab probably seeding this thought in my mind, but it strikes me now that the narrative is perhaps a retelling of The Little Prince, but from an intersectional perspective, taunt with the world's sufferings - this is a tale mostly of enslaved women and eunuchs and the men who own them, inevitably perhaps it reminds me of Heart of Darkness with its journey from the coast deep into the interior - in this case giving an opportunity for the narrator like Kurtz to journey into their own interior. I think I could read it repeatedly, and each me discover a different book between the same covers. It's pretty fantastic too in its storytelling, a fable, passing strange as any story involving a mistress, mother and goddess living in a Baobab tree really ought to be. I fear to say anything more in case of .
October 18, 2020
But the most important point is that reality doesn’t fit into any words. Reality strikes you dumb. Everything important that happens in life is beyond words. There comes a point when you understand that if what you have experienced can be expressed in words, it means you haven’t experienced anything.
*
I cannot shake time off me. He squats continually before my tree. Everything that has been in my life is always with me, simultaneously, and the events refuse to stand nicely one after the other in a row. They hook into each other, shift around, scatter, force themselves on me or try to slip out of my memory. I have difficulty with them in the necklace of my memory. I am not a carefree little herder of time at all. Day and night pass. Summer and winter, another summer, and here is winter again. This is easy, but not the time that has made of me what I am and that lives within me with another rhythm.
*
The clattering stream and then the river into which it quietly and timidly debouches. The river runs towards where the sun and moon rise, towards where I once began to travel, towards the sea of the city from which we departed in search of a city on the sea at the other margin of the world.
I long for nothing any more.
*
I cannot shake time off me. He squats continually before my tree. Everything that has been in my life is always with me, simultaneously, and the events refuse to stand nicely one after the other in a row. They hook into each other, shift around, scatter, force themselves on me or try to slip out of my memory. I have difficulty with them in the necklace of my memory. I am not a carefree little herder of time at all. Day and night pass. Summer and winter, another summer, and here is winter again. This is easy, but not the time that has made of me what I am and that lives within me with another rhythm.
*
The clattering stream and then the river into which it quietly and timidly debouches. The river runs towards where the sun and moon rise, towards where I once began to travel, towards the sea of the city from which we departed in search of a city on the sea at the other margin of the world.
I long for nothing any more.
August 26, 2014
The Expedition to the Baobab Tree is not an easy novel to read or to comprehend. It is often written in stream of consciousness style and involves the life of a woman captured as a child when her village was raided by slavers. The narrative is part memory, part recall of her life as a slave then mistress to her "benefactor", then a fever dream after a cross-veld trip goes horribly wrong. After that, her home and solace is the baobab tree, giver and prolonger of life. But the narrative does not follow a format of this order and it took very close attention for me to find a semblance of order in the almost mad ramblings that constitute some of this book.
At the same time, there are beautiful and evocative passages, descriptions of the land and people that call out to be re-read immediately. In the following passage is a hint of the terrible role that memory plays in this woman's life.
On the many paths of my memory there arise threatening
figures that block every backward glance. I know these
figures. I cannot name them. they loom up before me in the
form of something human or sometimes like the corner of a
hairy wall or a rolling hut opening that tries to swallow
me and drag me off, an opening that storms down in a rage,
storms down at a tremendous speed, and then a yard from
me suddenly swerves away and saunters and entices me;
sometimes too a quiet misshapenness of expectation
followed by a noticeable dejection when the multitude of
sharp pincers that grip me turn into the slack tendrils of
a thicket, when the whole business disappears without
further ado leaving an unfathomable grey behind. There are
more tracks crisscrossing in my memory than I ever actually
saw in a lifetime. (loc 53)
In this selection, the reader can get an idea of the confusion of images and ideas presented in the novel. These do all coalesce and become manageable by the end but it is challenging reading along the way. I plan to read this again someday.
Rating 3.5 rounded up to 4* because of the consistency and quality of the writing while acknowledging the difficulty of the reading process.
I was provided with an ecopy of this book by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
At the same time, there are beautiful and evocative passages, descriptions of the land and people that call out to be re-read immediately. In the following passage is a hint of the terrible role that memory plays in this woman's life.
On the many paths of my memory there arise threatening
figures that block every backward glance. I know these
figures. I cannot name them. they loom up before me in the
form of something human or sometimes like the corner of a
hairy wall or a rolling hut opening that tries to swallow
me and drag me off, an opening that storms down in a rage,
storms down at a tremendous speed, and then a yard from
me suddenly swerves away and saunters and entices me;
sometimes too a quiet misshapenness of expectation
followed by a noticeable dejection when the multitude of
sharp pincers that grip me turn into the slack tendrils of
a thicket, when the whole business disappears without
further ado leaving an unfathomable grey behind. There are
more tracks crisscrossing in my memory than I ever actually
saw in a lifetime. (loc 53)
In this selection, the reader can get an idea of the confusion of images and ideas presented in the novel. These do all coalesce and become manageable by the end but it is challenging reading along the way. I plan to read this again someday.
Rating 3.5 rounded up to 4* because of the consistency and quality of the writing while acknowledging the difficulty of the reading process.
I was provided with an ecopy of this book by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
August 4, 2015
I came across this book by chance, first published as Die kremetartekspedisie in its original Afrikaans in 1981, it was translated into English by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, initially in 1983 and again in 2014.
I had never heard of Wilma Stockenström, but after a little digging, I find:
It is a quiet, compelling, stream of consciousness narrative of a slave woman who finds refuge in the hollow of a baobab tree, attempting to survive following the death of her third master, finding herself abandoned in an often hostile wilderness.
Embracing this newfound freedom of her body, mind and time, she thinks back over the years, reflecting on what her existence thus far has meant, the role of her three masters, moments shared with a friend, the loss of her children and the inclinations of man, something she has witnessed both in captivity and in this solitary freedom, where she finds a kind of disturbed though preferable peace.
She is viewed by a tribe of small people who make a pilgrimage to the tree and recognise her as some kind of deity. It is their generosity and ritual of giving alms that aids her survival.
She notices everything, she appreciates her surroundings and tunes into small changes and disturbances in it. She becomes it.
Haunting, lyrical, this work is unlike any other narrative of the life of a slave woman I have ever encountered.
I had never heard of Wilma Stockenström, but after a little digging, I find:
"For the past four decades Wilma Johanna Stockenström has been enriching Afrikaans literature with her satirical, obstinate and compassionate voice. Along with Elisabeth Eybers, Sheila Cussons, Ina Rousseau and Antjie Krog, she remains one of the most important women writers in Afrikaans." © Johann de Lange
It is a quiet, compelling, stream of consciousness narrative of a slave woman who finds refuge in the hollow of a baobab tree, attempting to survive following the death of her third master, finding herself abandoned in an often hostile wilderness.
"I was sold off a second time on the square near the sea where even then the raggedy castor-oil trees were standing. Was sold secondhand. I was a damaged plaything, my bundle of baby and myself bid for separately and disposed of separately. Simply playthings. Useful, certainly. My owner thought he had wasted his money."
Embracing this newfound freedom of her body, mind and time, she thinks back over the years, reflecting on what her existence thus far has meant, the role of her three masters, moments shared with a friend, the loss of her children and the inclinations of man, something she has witnessed both in captivity and in this solitary freedom, where she finds a kind of disturbed though preferable peace.
"I know the interior of my tree as a blind man knows his home, I know its flat surfaces and grooves and swellings and edges, its smell, its darknesses, its great crack of light as I never knew the huts and rooms where I was ordered to sleep, as I can only know something that is mine and mine only, my dwelling place into which no one ever penetrates. I can say: this is mine. I can say: this is I. These are my footprints. These are the ashes of my fireplace. These are my grinding stones. These are my beads. My sherds."
She is viewed by a tribe of small people who make a pilgrimage to the tree and recognise her as some kind of deity. It is their generosity and ritual of giving alms that aids her survival.
She notices everything, she appreciates her surroundings and tunes into small changes and disturbances in it. She becomes it.
Haunting, lyrical, this work is unlike any other narrative of the life of a slave woman I have ever encountered.
March 25, 2023
Even with the English and Dutch translations at hand, I found this a difficult read. There are no chapters, it is just a long stream of consciousness, written in a poetic language.
Past and present are intermingled. The narrator looks back on her life, but also relates her current life in the baobab tree. Sometimes it was hard to tell which was which. It didn't help that in Afrikaans most verbs do not have a separate form for the past simple tense, it is the same as the present tense (the translations do use both present and past tenses).
The narrator doesn't provide names for anyone. It took me a while to grasp that "my weldoener" (my benefactor) and "die vreemdeling" (the stranger) were two different people.
These things all added to the strange, dreamlike quality. An intriguing novella.
Past and present are intermingled. The narrator looks back on her life, but also relates her current life in the baobab tree. Sometimes it was hard to tell which was which. It didn't help that in Afrikaans most verbs do not have a separate form for the past simple tense, it is the same as the present tense (the translations do use both present and past tenses).
The narrator doesn't provide names for anyone. It took me a while to grasp that "my weldoener" (my benefactor) and "die vreemdeling" (the stranger) were two different people.
These things all added to the strange, dreamlike quality. An intriguing novella.
January 15, 2016
You don't read a novel like this one very often.
The sort that, like a summer fling that has lasted too long, feels like you are no longer in love and just now discovering its flaws. Perhaps the smile is just a bit wrong, or the summer on the beach has added a few too many inches to the waistline, or the hair is too unkempt, and that laugh is so annoying in a way that you never felt it before. The chemistry, which once was so strong, so dominant, the thing you surrounded yourself with like an ocean in a storm, undeniable, like an entrapment, that chemistry has fallen away and the perfect veneer of a few romantic months chips away into a September devoid of an Indian Summer.
That feeling, as you're sitting down for brunch and the summer sun has started to shift its gaze to the other hemispheres, is the feeling you get when you are reading this book. All the pieces are there for you to enjoy it, but there is no connection, no joy, the fling is over and both of you can feel it even if you think that you shouldn't, even if at first you doubt it and dread it, because you wanted that feeling to last forever with the summer. That miraculous thing felt between two people, the thing which pops and sizzles and sometimes is called chemistry, it disappears and you are both scrambling to figure out why and if it can ever be captured again.
You seem to mutually agree that it can’t, and with fondness you separate yourself from the man or woman or dog or book or house which has given you something wonderful for just long enough to be good but not long enough to be loved.
That is the feeling I got when I read this book, though I got the bittersweet sensations in a heavy dosage. I think I skipped through the periods of exploration, the fun tequila-drunk nights by the fire on the sand, the soft touches and the quick sensual glances, the stealing away to the bedroom behind all of our friends’ back, the certainty that this summer partner is exactly the kind of partner you have always wanted and who may, or may not, be the one that you always want to be with. My relationship with this book skipped all those good parts.
There is no reason to not love this book. It is beautifully written, it comes with a fascinating structure, an interesting story, complex ideas and themes. This is the sort of book that people love to read and discuss and parse into pieces, that is formally strong, the sort that is deserving of a good master’s thesis or two - the sort that I usually can’t wait to jump into and dance around in.
It starts with a girl hidden in a tree, and begins to play around with her history, slowly revealing more and more about her life and how it is that she came to be in the tree. It doesn’t bother asking why she is in the tree - it seems to have very little symbolic meaning that I can figure out anyways - this story is all about “how”, in a historical rather than literary sense. You see, this girl was a slave, presumably in an age passed, presumably in a part near or around modern day South Africa. As a slave she was passed around from owner to owner as though she was a thing, an object. As a slave she learned that she was nothing more than an object, that she had to beg to be saved and treated with some level of humanity - that she had a function and a purpose that made her valuable to her owner, and that function or purpose had nothing to do with her humanity. She was a sexual servant. The story is all in the history of the girl, though I suspect that she is actually a woman, and it is fascinating at times and for moments. But those moments are fleeting, and don’t really build up onto itself in any meaningful way. I couldn’t help but feel that most of the novel didn’t really have a raison d’etre that I could latch onto and make sense of.
It has the inquiry in it that one sees in Beckett (I’m thinking of his masterpiece Company), and the aimlessness that one sees in Coetzee (I’m thinking of his masterpiece The Life and Times of Michael K). These are two wonderful novellas, both worth a solid re-reading, both of which really made me think about life and its purpose, both of which challenged me as a reader. That is about where I would place this one too, though upon first reading it is far from a masterpiece and more likely an impressive piece of art from a talented writer. Stockenstrom has written here an interesting story, complex and heavy with ideas and questions, which may or may not be laden with existential questions about the purpose of life. It is hard to tell. The Expedition to the Baobab Tree certainly challenged me as a reader, but once I sat with it a bit more I started to feel its power and beauty and started recognizing its form and shape and thinking that it had something important to add to my reading life - something that I had only seen in glimpses before but that I had never had shown me in full form before.
But on first reading it didn’t happen that way. Ironically, maybe that is because it got a bit too preachy at the end, trying to tell me that meaning that it was alluding to the entire time. You definitely can’t say of Coetzee or Beckett that they ever get too preachy in their ideas of themes. And yet those books have stayed with me a good deal longer than this one has. What was it about?
Ultimately it comes down to the lack of chemistry I felt with this book. I’m not sure what was wrong with it, or me. Maybe the loss of the summer sun, or the discovery of some embarassing tan line under the veil of the bathing suit. If we adapted this bittersweet fling to the dating world, I guess I could that I enjoyed the first date just enough to go for a second, but unlike Company and The Life and Times of Michael K, I don’t yet see the potential for a lifelong, committed relationship. Maybe it will happen if I ever take the time to reread it - second dates can, after all, lead you to some amazing discoveries which the awkwardness and forced seriousness of the first date kept hidden from the eye of the beholder. Maybe I can come to appreciate the laugh. Maybe it is a good deal less aggravating than I think it is.
The sort that, like a summer fling that has lasted too long, feels like you are no longer in love and just now discovering its flaws. Perhaps the smile is just a bit wrong, or the summer on the beach has added a few too many inches to the waistline, or the hair is too unkempt, and that laugh is so annoying in a way that you never felt it before. The chemistry, which once was so strong, so dominant, the thing you surrounded yourself with like an ocean in a storm, undeniable, like an entrapment, that chemistry has fallen away and the perfect veneer of a few romantic months chips away into a September devoid of an Indian Summer.
That feeling, as you're sitting down for brunch and the summer sun has started to shift its gaze to the other hemispheres, is the feeling you get when you are reading this book. All the pieces are there for you to enjoy it, but there is no connection, no joy, the fling is over and both of you can feel it even if you think that you shouldn't, even if at first you doubt it and dread it, because you wanted that feeling to last forever with the summer. That miraculous thing felt between two people, the thing which pops and sizzles and sometimes is called chemistry, it disappears and you are both scrambling to figure out why and if it can ever be captured again.
You seem to mutually agree that it can’t, and with fondness you separate yourself from the man or woman or dog or book or house which has given you something wonderful for just long enough to be good but not long enough to be loved.
That is the feeling I got when I read this book, though I got the bittersweet sensations in a heavy dosage. I think I skipped through the periods of exploration, the fun tequila-drunk nights by the fire on the sand, the soft touches and the quick sensual glances, the stealing away to the bedroom behind all of our friends’ back, the certainty that this summer partner is exactly the kind of partner you have always wanted and who may, or may not, be the one that you always want to be with. My relationship with this book skipped all those good parts.
There is no reason to not love this book. It is beautifully written, it comes with a fascinating structure, an interesting story, complex ideas and themes. This is the sort of book that people love to read and discuss and parse into pieces, that is formally strong, the sort that is deserving of a good master’s thesis or two - the sort that I usually can’t wait to jump into and dance around in.
It starts with a girl hidden in a tree, and begins to play around with her history, slowly revealing more and more about her life and how it is that she came to be in the tree. It doesn’t bother asking why she is in the tree - it seems to have very little symbolic meaning that I can figure out anyways - this story is all about “how”, in a historical rather than literary sense. You see, this girl was a slave, presumably in an age passed, presumably in a part near or around modern day South Africa. As a slave she was passed around from owner to owner as though she was a thing, an object. As a slave she learned that she was nothing more than an object, that she had to beg to be saved and treated with some level of humanity - that she had a function and a purpose that made her valuable to her owner, and that function or purpose had nothing to do with her humanity. She was a sexual servant. The story is all in the history of the girl, though I suspect that she is actually a woman, and it is fascinating at times and for moments. But those moments are fleeting, and don’t really build up onto itself in any meaningful way. I couldn’t help but feel that most of the novel didn’t really have a raison d’etre that I could latch onto and make sense of.
It has the inquiry in it that one sees in Beckett (I’m thinking of his masterpiece Company), and the aimlessness that one sees in Coetzee (I’m thinking of his masterpiece The Life and Times of Michael K). These are two wonderful novellas, both worth a solid re-reading, both of which really made me think about life and its purpose, both of which challenged me as a reader. That is about where I would place this one too, though upon first reading it is far from a masterpiece and more likely an impressive piece of art from a talented writer. Stockenstrom has written here an interesting story, complex and heavy with ideas and questions, which may or may not be laden with existential questions about the purpose of life. It is hard to tell. The Expedition to the Baobab Tree certainly challenged me as a reader, but once I sat with it a bit more I started to feel its power and beauty and started recognizing its form and shape and thinking that it had something important to add to my reading life - something that I had only seen in glimpses before but that I had never had shown me in full form before.
But on first reading it didn’t happen that way. Ironically, maybe that is because it got a bit too preachy at the end, trying to tell me that meaning that it was alluding to the entire time. You definitely can’t say of Coetzee or Beckett that they ever get too preachy in their ideas of themes. And yet those books have stayed with me a good deal longer than this one has. What was it about?
Ultimately it comes down to the lack of chemistry I felt with this book. I’m not sure what was wrong with it, or me. Maybe the loss of the summer sun, or the discovery of some embarassing tan line under the veil of the bathing suit. If we adapted this bittersweet fling to the dating world, I guess I could that I enjoyed the first date just enough to go for a second, but unlike Company and The Life and Times of Michael K, I don’t yet see the potential for a lifelong, committed relationship. Maybe it will happen if I ever take the time to reread it - second dates can, after all, lead you to some amazing discoveries which the awkwardness and forced seriousness of the first date kept hidden from the eye of the beholder. Maybe I can come to appreciate the laugh. Maybe it is a good deal less aggravating than I think it is.
November 19, 2021
THE EXPEDITION TO THE BAOBAB TREE (1981, translated from the Afrikaans by J. M. Coetzee) is a remarkable novella narrated by a former slave, an illiterate unnamed woman, who has passed through various owners. The story is set at the end of the fifteenth century, when Vasco da Gama’s expedition landed on East African shores. The narrative, a monologue with flashbacks and a hallucinatory quality, blurs the lines among reality, dreams and imagination.
The narrator lives alone inside a baobab tree, isolated but free and in relative safety. She has plenty of free time now, so she delves through her memories and tells us how she was sold into slavery when she was a little girl, how her sexual attractiveness gave her some power and how the babies she birthed were taken away from her. She has witnessed and experienced many atrocities, yet she managed to survive. In the end she participated in an ill-fated expedition with her last owner across southern Africa, where both of them were betrayed by one member of the expedition and left to die in the veld. She barely survived but found a home in the hollow of a baobab tree.
The narrator describes her life in the southern African veld, the landscape and animals, and the "little people", who think she is a tree spirit and bring her food and offerings but refuse to talk to her. The hopelessness, the loneliness are hard to bear. She remembers her stillborn child and longs for annihilation: "I crouched in the belly of the tree and understood the flickering train of thought in my baby who had chosen darkness over the light of life. It was an ecstasy of never being. It was the only true victory: neither death nor life had meaning. It was equilibrium. It was the perfection of non-being."
This heartbreaking book is a quiet masterpiece written by the renowned South African poet Wilma Stockensröm, a poignant story of slavery and exploitation seen through the eyes of the oppressed, which I highly recommend.
The narrator lives alone inside a baobab tree, isolated but free and in relative safety. She has plenty of free time now, so she delves through her memories and tells us how she was sold into slavery when she was a little girl, how her sexual attractiveness gave her some power and how the babies she birthed were taken away from her. She has witnessed and experienced many atrocities, yet she managed to survive. In the end she participated in an ill-fated expedition with her last owner across southern Africa, where both of them were betrayed by one member of the expedition and left to die in the veld. She barely survived but found a home in the hollow of a baobab tree.
The narrator describes her life in the southern African veld, the landscape and animals, and the "little people", who think she is a tree spirit and bring her food and offerings but refuse to talk to her. The hopelessness, the loneliness are hard to bear. She remembers her stillborn child and longs for annihilation: "I crouched in the belly of the tree and understood the flickering train of thought in my baby who had chosen darkness over the light of life. It was an ecstasy of never being. It was the only true victory: neither death nor life had meaning. It was equilibrium. It was the perfection of non-being."
This heartbreaking book is a quiet masterpiece written by the renowned South African poet Wilma Stockensröm, a poignant story of slavery and exploitation seen through the eyes of the oppressed, which I highly recommend.
July 29, 2019
Sometimes I trust incoherent book recommendations more than I trust well-argued ones. An ability to conjure many and persuasive words, often as not, leaves me cold, especially if those persuasive words contain nothing personal, nothing that another reviewer equally endowed with “objectivity” couldn’t have said as well. On the other hand, a few simple words from my dad―“Try this, it’s interesting,” the review that served for both Tarjei Vesaas’s The Birds and Wilma Stockenstrom’s Expedition to the Baobab Tree―gets me wondering, despite that I know that half of what he reads (Somerset Maugham, Norman Mailer, a recent spate of contemporary crime potboilers) probably isn’t for me.
The Expedition to the Baobab Tree―what is it then? The hyperreal, not to say semi-hallucinatory, first-person narrative of an escaped slave, many times courtesan to the prominent men of an unnamed African city, now lone resident of a baobab in the veld, watched over like a goddess or a prisoner by an unnamed tribe of protectors. It’s violent, sometimes horrific, shadowed with pain, but maybe because its author is a white woman, seen as if through a slight fog of dream, something like Beckett’s depictions of the homeless (in First Love and Other Novellas) but more tied to quotidian reality. What Stockenstrom’s motive in writing it could be is difficult to guess, beyond the exploration/assuaging of collective guilt, but never in an obvious political sense; instead, the guilt, like the landscape through which the expedition wanders, is simply present, to be experienced. Nor is Stockenstrom’s protagonist bland heroine or cipher; from kidnapped child trained in coquetry by older women, to teenager made egotist by the dawning realisation of her power (such as it is) over her white male captors, to pretend princess outcast among her fellow slaves, she progresses at last to enlightenment:
The text is translated from the Afrikaans by J.M. Coetzee. The prose is clean, sharp, coolly precise. It’s easy to see why Coetzee might have taken on this project; in many ways it’s the yin to the yang of his Life and Times of Michael K, containing everything spiritual which that documentary-style, masculine, also Beckettian tale of alienation only suggested. If the word “visionary” means anything any more, this is visionary, but not with the Gothic or technicolour intensity of Poe or Marquez or Raymond Roussel. Mosaic-like, almost flat in places, but always alive, this is a minor but unique masterpiece. I recommend it as my dad did, with a shrug, not entirely sure of what I’ve read. See what you think.
A few days ago I had seen a hammerhead shark leaping in spasms there on the beach where fish-drying racks cast their grid-shadows. It was trying to lift its whole body up from the sand as if wanting to swim upwards into the sky. Sometimes one eye was buried in the sand, sometimes the other; one saw doom, the other spied hope, and in uncertainty the poor thing struggled. Spasmodic jerks, fanatical till death, eyes that till death bisected the world. Would he, even in death, have to reconcile the one half with the other half to find his way in that haze? Deeper and deeper he steered himself on into death with thrusting movements of the head. To the left hung death as a grey apparition, to the right hung death as a grey apparition, no choice for him, but perhaps he fabricated his own death and chose the total nothing of seeing nothing more, and nothing has neither tinge nor grain nor substance.
The Expedition to the Baobab Tree―what is it then? The hyperreal, not to say semi-hallucinatory, first-person narrative of an escaped slave, many times courtesan to the prominent men of an unnamed African city, now lone resident of a baobab in the veld, watched over like a goddess or a prisoner by an unnamed tribe of protectors. It’s violent, sometimes horrific, shadowed with pain, but maybe because its author is a white woman, seen as if through a slight fog of dream, something like Beckett’s depictions of the homeless (in First Love and Other Novellas) but more tied to quotidian reality. What Stockenstrom’s motive in writing it could be is difficult to guess, beyond the exploration/assuaging of collective guilt, but never in an obvious political sense; instead, the guilt, like the landscape through which the expedition wanders, is simply present, to be experienced. Nor is Stockenstrom’s protagonist bland heroine or cipher; from kidnapped child trained in coquetry by older women, to teenager made egotist by the dawning realisation of her power (such as it is) over her white male captors, to pretend princess outcast among her fellow slaves, she progresses at last to enlightenment:
I drink my own life. Quickly, water-spirit. Let your envoy carry out his task swiftly.
Yes.
As a bird takes leave of a branch. Fruit falls. A bat. Like a bat, black and searching.
I dive into dark water and row with my wings toward the far side where in descending silence I am no longer able to help myself and deafly fly further and further. I will find rest in the upside-down. I fold my wings.
The text is translated from the Afrikaans by J.M. Coetzee. The prose is clean, sharp, coolly precise. It’s easy to see why Coetzee might have taken on this project; in many ways it’s the yin to the yang of his Life and Times of Michael K, containing everything spiritual which that documentary-style, masculine, also Beckettian tale of alienation only suggested. If the word “visionary” means anything any more, this is visionary, but not with the Gothic or technicolour intensity of Poe or Marquez or Raymond Roussel. Mosaic-like, almost flat in places, but always alive, this is a minor but unique masterpiece. I recommend it as my dad did, with a shrug, not entirely sure of what I’ve read. See what you think.
July 31, 2018
If I could write…
If I could write, I would take up a porcupine quill and scratch your enormous belly full from top to bottom. I would clamber up as far as your branches and carve notches in your armpits to make you laugh. Big letters. Small letters. In a script full of lobes and curls, in circumambient lines I write round and round you, for I have so much to tell of a trip to a new horizon that became an expedition to a tree.But of course she cannot write. For this is a former slave, captured as a young girl in the heart of Africa, sold to rich merchants in the South willing to pay first for unplucked fruit and later for a compliant young concubine. Now, presumably still young, she is in the heart of the African plains once more, living in a hollow baobab tree, alone, but her own mistress for the first time. The fact that she cannot write at all is not limitation but licence. Licence for Afrikaans writer Wilma Stockenström to give her words that she could not possibly know, aided now by a luxuriant translation by Nobel Prizewinner J. M. Coetzee. Licence to have her ignore the normal rules of narrative, and enfold the past into the present, reality into dream, until this short but exquisite book becomes a single long poem in prose, lament and celebration and lament once more.
Facts emerge, but very little can be pinned down. We never know the year, though it is probably in the earlier 1800s. We are not told the country of her captivity, though we assume the southeast tip of Africa. The girl herself is never named. Gradually, we form a picture of her various owners, lascivious, cruel, or indulgent, and the final one that she calls only the Stranger, who serves more as protector than master. For the most part, hers is not a slavehood of the hovel and the lash; before long, she is well fed, splendidly clothed, and pampered. But never her own person. She depends upon the will of others. Her children are taken away from her as soon as they are weaned. When she visits the quarters of her former companions, she is rejected. Though she is carried by other slaves in a palanquin on that final quixotic expedition to find a city of rose quartz by the shores of a distant sea, she has no choice but to go along.
So we see her now, the only survivor, emaciated, grubbing in the earth for doubtful food. She is saved by an encounter with a tribe of tiny bushmen, who bring her daily offerings as though to a god, but it is only another kind of captivity:
I often ask myself whether they are displaying charity towards me or bringing tribute. I try to behave fittingly. Acknowledge to myself that there is nothing for me to do but accept my fate as a pampered captive and show myself grateful accordingly.But things can change. She may have no power over the world around her, but still retains some power over herself. The final pages of the book, if possible, are even more beautiful than those that had preceded them. And even more disturbing.
December 6, 2021
"Yalnızca uyuduğum zamanlar kim olduğumu tam olarak biliyorum. Çünkü rüyalarıma ben hakimim ve onları memnuniyetle işgal ediyorum. Böyle zamanlarda kendime gerekliyim."
Kitap Coetzee'nin İngilizceye çevirmesi ile dikkat çekmiş, üzerine bir de tiyatroya başarılı bir şekilde uyarlanmış.
Bir baobab ağacının içinde geçen ve hep doğada olan bir hikaye nasıl sahnede canlandırılmış merak uyandırıcı doğrusu...
🌟
Kitap Coetzee'nin İngilizceye çevirmesi ile dikkat çekmiş, üzerine bir de tiyatroya başarılı bir şekilde uyarlanmış.
Bir baobab ağacının içinde geçen ve hep doğada olan bir hikaye nasıl sahnede canlandırılmış merak uyandırıcı doğrusu...
🌟
April 16, 2014
A woman walks the same path each day from the hollow interior of a baobab tree in which she lives to her water source to collect her water. As she collects the water, she remembers the journey that brought her to this place.
She talks about her time in the veld. At first, her life in the baobab is difficult. She doesn’t know how to fend for herself and competes with animals for what she can scavenge, food that often makes her sick. She feels weak and scared and soon she finds that sleep is the ‘dense solution’. But when she wakes, she feels better, stronger
“…imperiously I stand now and gaze out over the veld, and every time I step outside the world belongs to me. Every time I step out from the protecting interior of the tree I am once again a human being and powerful…”
This is in stark contrast with her previous life She is sold into slavery as a child to a man to whom she’s nothing more than a sexual object. After giving birth, she’s sold to another master and her child is sold away from her. The new master is cruel. During the day, the slaves toil in the gardens but at night the young attractive slaves are at the mercy of the master’s lust and the narrator envies the older, less attractive slaves who are exempted from this; she wishes to be ‘unmanned’. Eventually, she is accidently buried under a branch of a kudu-berry tree, but another man sends his slaves to rescue her. He becomes her third master, the “Protector’. He’s a kinder master, pampering her and allowing her an ‘easy, indolent existence’.
When he dies, she fears his son would not be kind so she begs a man she calls ‘the Stranger’ to buy her. He’s a merchant who trades with the son. The son has a plan to develop a trade route through the interior of Africa and elicits the support of the Stranger. From the beginning, this journey is fraught with dangers and upsets: thefts of supplies, mutinous slaves, and dangerous predators both animal and human. In the end, the quest is a complete failure. Both the son and the stranger die and the surviving slaves are caught by slavers – all except her. She walks away to the shelter of her baobab tree.
The Expedition to the Baobab tree was written in 1981 by Afrikaner author Wilma Stockenstrom and has recently been translated into English by Nobel laureate JM Coetzee. It is a non-linear interior monologue and, at times, admittedly, I found it hard to follow and had to reread parts to figure out where I was. However, it is written with such beautiful and lyrical prose that, even when I was lost, I enjoyed the journey. It contains elements of fable (nature plays a very important role and noone, including the narrator is named), myth (she is seen as a divinity by a tribe that sees her near her tree and leave her gifts), and allegory as her ‘journey’ from slavery to freedom can be seen as a metaphor for a woman’s journey through life or, perhaps, the struggle in South Africa to end Apartheid. It touches on many themes such as identity, respect for nature, and the idea that freedom, even when it is accompanied by want is, in the end, better than the most benevolent slavery
– Or maybe I’m completely wrong. This is the kind of literary fiction that challenges the reader, makes them work at their understanding of the symbolism running throughout, and to place their own interpretation on it. As such, it won’t appeal to everyone but, for the reader who enjoys beautiful prose and enjoys being challenged by their reading, The Expedition to the Baobab Tree is well worth the effort .
She talks about her time in the veld. At first, her life in the baobab is difficult. She doesn’t know how to fend for herself and competes with animals for what she can scavenge, food that often makes her sick. She feels weak and scared and soon she finds that sleep is the ‘dense solution’. But when she wakes, she feels better, stronger
“…imperiously I stand now and gaze out over the veld, and every time I step outside the world belongs to me. Every time I step out from the protecting interior of the tree I am once again a human being and powerful…”
This is in stark contrast with her previous life She is sold into slavery as a child to a man to whom she’s nothing more than a sexual object. After giving birth, she’s sold to another master and her child is sold away from her. The new master is cruel. During the day, the slaves toil in the gardens but at night the young attractive slaves are at the mercy of the master’s lust and the narrator envies the older, less attractive slaves who are exempted from this; she wishes to be ‘unmanned’. Eventually, she is accidently buried under a branch of a kudu-berry tree, but another man sends his slaves to rescue her. He becomes her third master, the “Protector’. He’s a kinder master, pampering her and allowing her an ‘easy, indolent existence’.
When he dies, she fears his son would not be kind so she begs a man she calls ‘the Stranger’ to buy her. He’s a merchant who trades with the son. The son has a plan to develop a trade route through the interior of Africa and elicits the support of the Stranger. From the beginning, this journey is fraught with dangers and upsets: thefts of supplies, mutinous slaves, and dangerous predators both animal and human. In the end, the quest is a complete failure. Both the son and the stranger die and the surviving slaves are caught by slavers – all except her. She walks away to the shelter of her baobab tree.
The Expedition to the Baobab tree was written in 1981 by Afrikaner author Wilma Stockenstrom and has recently been translated into English by Nobel laureate JM Coetzee. It is a non-linear interior monologue and, at times, admittedly, I found it hard to follow and had to reread parts to figure out where I was. However, it is written with such beautiful and lyrical prose that, even when I was lost, I enjoyed the journey. It contains elements of fable (nature plays a very important role and noone, including the narrator is named), myth (she is seen as a divinity by a tribe that sees her near her tree and leave her gifts), and allegory as her ‘journey’ from slavery to freedom can be seen as a metaphor for a woman’s journey through life or, perhaps, the struggle in South Africa to end Apartheid. It touches on many themes such as identity, respect for nature, and the idea that freedom, even when it is accompanied by want is, in the end, better than the most benevolent slavery
– Or maybe I’m completely wrong. This is the kind of literary fiction that challenges the reader, makes them work at their understanding of the symbolism running throughout, and to place their own interpretation on it. As such, it won’t appeal to everyone but, for the reader who enjoys beautiful prose and enjoys being challenged by their reading, The Expedition to the Baobab Tree is well worth the effort .
April 29, 2019
This is a unique, dreamlike book that recounts the memories of a former slave looking back over the experiences of her life. It is unusual and rather difficult to describe, but the evocative language and situations will stay with the reader.
March 22, 2016
Achingly & heartbreakingly beautiful. A haunting, stream-of-consciousness story of slavery, survival, solitude, strangeness, & strength. The language is lovely.
August 7, 2014
This book is full of gorgeous writing, like reading a long poem full of beautiful, memorable turns of phrase. Stockenstrom writes best when she writes simply, catching the voice of the slave girl as she addresses her protector and home, the baobab tree. Consider this passage as the narrator ruminates on sleep and dreams: "Only when I am asleep do I know fully who I am, for I reign over my dreamtime and occupy my dreams contentedly. At such times I am necessary to myself." Or this reflection on thoughts, memories, and reality: "I used the artifacts of forgotten people to while away time, to coagulate time, with the bitter realization that it was changing nothing in the nothingness." The simple beauty of such thoughts, however, can be undermined by phrasing and word choice that do not seem consistent with the narrator: “circumambient”? A misstep in continuity? For the author, or for translator J.M. Coetzee as he steps from Afrikaans to English? Is this Stockenstrom reflecting the narrator’s rich, sophisticated thoughts divorced from her actual voice? Whatever the case, I prefer the deceivingly complex expressions captured in the simple phrasing. This is a challenging read, and one perhaps best exemplified when the narrator states: “I like to reconnoiter. I like to discover. I cannot get enthusiastic about humanity, but I do not stop testing and I do not stop searching.” Be prepared to test, search, and ultimately discover with this work of art.
April 17, 2020
*This review based on the Advanced Reader's Copy
I loved this story. So much. I love that it wasn't linear. I loved the way the words spiraled around me. I loved that I was made aware of a world I had never known about before. I loved how raw it was. How honest. It was a wonderful journey. I can't think of appropriate words to describe it ~ I shall try to formulate my thoughts better in a review elsewhere. For here, this review will just have to do.
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I passed on my ARC and bought my own copy, finally!, and was able to re-read it this month. I love this book so much. Such a powerful story. I love the prose style. It's so poetic and lyrical.
I loved this story. So much. I love that it wasn't linear. I loved the way the words spiraled around me. I loved that I was made aware of a world I had never known about before. I loved how raw it was. How honest. It was a wonderful journey. I can't think of appropriate words to describe it ~ I shall try to formulate my thoughts better in a review elsewhere. For here, this review will just have to do.
---
I passed on my ARC and bought my own copy, finally!, and was able to re-read it this month. I love this book so much. Such a powerful story. I love the prose style. It's so poetic and lyrical.
July 20, 2014
stream of consciousness narratives normally leave me cold, but this novella grabbed me from it's first lyrical sentence and wouldn't let me go. I hid in the Baobob tree along with the narrator and felt the fear, the delight, the horror, the calm, and the desperation of a young girl captured and sold into slavery. The weaving of time and tale were somewhat confusing but yield attention to Wilma Stockensturm's beautiful language and you too will be rewarded with an exceptional tale that will penetrate your ordinary life like a scalpel wielded by an expert surgeon.
A book to treasure.
A book to treasure.
August 6, 2015
Beautiful, poetic prose. The narrator's voice is like a dream. The winding run-on sentences flow with life. Reminds me a bit of Clarice Lispector. This is an amazing work of translation.
November 14, 2022
I am reviewing "The Expedition to the Baobab Tree" because I use my GR database as a journal of my readings. This is the first Afrikaans novel that I have read and I simply could not understand what points that the author Wilma Stockenström was trying to make.
Because the protagonist is a slave and the novel is a chronicle of the indignities that are inflicted upon her, I assume that the work has a political message. Unfortunately Stockenström chooses not to tell the reader either what country the events take place in or what the historical period is. The reader then does not know what she regime she is writing a critique of.
I discovered an article entitled "Revisiting the Baobab" by Louise Viljoen of the University of Stellenbosch in which it is affirmed that the slave-protagonist lived in the 15th century and that the abandoned city that she passes through is Mapungubuwe (1075-1220) in the Limpopo province of the Northern Transvaal. I found on page 104 of Stockenström's novel the phrase: "these strange caravels that had latterly begun to call" (p. 104). This would support Viljoen's belief that the action takes place in the 15th century. Given that Mapungubuwe is an archeological site that is well known in South Africa, I am included to accept Viljoen's statement that the ruins described in the novel are those of Mapungubuwe.
Assuming that Viljoen is correct about the time and region, "The Expedition to the Baobab Tree" is not about the evils of the apartheid regime of the Boer dominated Union of South Africa but it is rather a fable about the generic ills of colonialism, of man's inhumanity to man and of man's savage treatment of women. The action takes place in a world of hobbesian horror where "life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Because the protagonist is a woman, she is not only exploited economically but sexually mistreated at every turn. Stockenström seems to be saying that the Boer system of apartheid was indeed horrific but that at the same time simply consistent without how humans have always treated other humans.
Unfortunately I could be mistaken in my analysis. If another edition of this book is ever released the publisher should add introduction and other background material that will assist the reader unfamiliar with the South African context to understand what points Stockenström is trying to make.
Because the protagonist is a slave and the novel is a chronicle of the indignities that are inflicted upon her, I assume that the work has a political message. Unfortunately Stockenström chooses not to tell the reader either what country the events take place in or what the historical period is. The reader then does not know what she regime she is writing a critique of.
I discovered an article entitled "Revisiting the Baobab" by Louise Viljoen of the University of Stellenbosch in which it is affirmed that the slave-protagonist lived in the 15th century and that the abandoned city that she passes through is Mapungubuwe (1075-1220) in the Limpopo province of the Northern Transvaal. I found on page 104 of Stockenström's novel the phrase: "these strange caravels that had latterly begun to call" (p. 104). This would support Viljoen's belief that the action takes place in the 15th century. Given that Mapungubuwe is an archeological site that is well known in South Africa, I am included to accept Viljoen's statement that the ruins described in the novel are those of Mapungubuwe.
Assuming that Viljoen is correct about the time and region, "The Expedition to the Baobab Tree" is not about the evils of the apartheid regime of the Boer dominated Union of South Africa but it is rather a fable about the generic ills of colonialism, of man's inhumanity to man and of man's savage treatment of women. The action takes place in a world of hobbesian horror where "life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Because the protagonist is a woman, she is not only exploited economically but sexually mistreated at every turn. Stockenström seems to be saying that the Boer system of apartheid was indeed horrific but that at the same time simply consistent without how humans have always treated other humans.
Unfortunately I could be mistaken in my analysis. If another edition of this book is ever released the publisher should add introduction and other background material that will assist the reader unfamiliar with the South African context to understand what points Stockenström is trying to make.
January 14, 2020
Kölelikten kaçıp, bir baobab ağacının kavuğunda barınmanın hikayesi. Arada neler olduğundan bahsetmem ama okurken ara ara yakamı gevşetiğim anlar oldu. Benliğin özgürleşme sürecine güzel tutulmuş bir ayna resmen. Belgeseli yapılsa da izlesem çünkü Afrika kıtasında yer alan ve bilmediğim birçok ağaca ve canlıya rastladım kitapta. Tek tek araştırdım. Bir bütün olarak görmek de isterim şahsen. Bir sahibin boyundurluğu altından ayrılıp, hür bir yaşam alanına ait olma durumunu gayet güzel hissettirdi. Ağaçları seviyorum.
June 5, 2014
If there is any doubt that Wilma Stockenström is an awesome writer, you need no further proof than the man who chose to translate this beautiful, poetic novel: the master himself, J. M. Coetzee. That said, I would like to concentrate briefly on the original work. The Expedition to the Baobab Tree is a first-person narrative account by a slave girl, presummably --although not specified-- in the southern cape of the African continent, at the beginning of colonisation in the XVIIth century. There are no proper names, no dates, no place names given; instead we are presented with a mesmerizingly poetic continuous narrative by the main character in which she meditates, by recalling her own experiences, and in the final circumstances of her strange solitude, on the meaning of life, the nature of crime, the contradictions of human nature.
It is,to me, regretable that I am not initiated into the intricacies of the Afrikaans language so that I could read more of the work of this unique writer. If this is the only sample available in English (or French, or Italian) of her work, I dare say it is almost worth learning her tongue, if for no other reason than to further explore the development of her work. As for Coetzee's translation there is little to be said without avoiding falling into banal adulation, but yes, it is as beautiful as the prose it renders into a more universal language. This is, in short, a coupling of two amazing creative minds from a nation that has provided as much talent as it has endured suffering, and time and time again overcome adversity through the power of creativity.
It is,to me, regretable that I am not initiated into the intricacies of the Afrikaans language so that I could read more of the work of this unique writer. If this is the only sample available in English (or French, or Italian) of her work, I dare say it is almost worth learning her tongue, if for no other reason than to further explore the development of her work. As for Coetzee's translation there is little to be said without avoiding falling into banal adulation, but yes, it is as beautiful as the prose it renders into a more universal language. This is, in short, a coupling of two amazing creative minds from a nation that has provided as much talent as it has endured suffering, and time and time again overcome adversity through the power of creativity.
January 16, 2014
The Expedition to the Baobab Tree
By Wilma Stockenstrom
Read 16th January 2014
This book read as a song. It is a stunning translation by J M Coetzee. It is perhaps the most lonely, sad book I have very read. It is the voice of a slave, who recalls her life of isolation, fear, shame and love. We never get to know her name and all other characters remain nameless. So we read of the life of a nameless girl, in a nameless place, in total solitude all her life. She is a slave – owned by others and yet when she accidently attains freedom she is still a slave to her situation. She cannot escape. She is the sole survivor of a failed expedition into the depths of Africa looking for an imagined city. She hides in a hollow trunk of a Baobab tree where she looks back at her existence with continual flashbacks of her previous life. We hear her voice talking to the reader. We become a witness to her history – her capture as a young girl and her life in a city with different masters. Her sorrow about her children. Her journey with her protectors. Then the ending – the survival in a baobab tree. I loved this book; the depth of imagery, personification and in-depth explanation. It was mesmerizing – the prose. The words will stay with me a long time. It was a lonely, melancholy read which will wake you up at night thinking about her plight. I give this book 4 stars.
Thank you Netgalley for letting me read this novel.
By Wilma Stockenstrom
Read 16th January 2014
This book read as a song. It is a stunning translation by J M Coetzee. It is perhaps the most lonely, sad book I have very read. It is the voice of a slave, who recalls her life of isolation, fear, shame and love. We never get to know her name and all other characters remain nameless. So we read of the life of a nameless girl, in a nameless place, in total solitude all her life. She is a slave – owned by others and yet when she accidently attains freedom she is still a slave to her situation. She cannot escape. She is the sole survivor of a failed expedition into the depths of Africa looking for an imagined city. She hides in a hollow trunk of a Baobab tree where she looks back at her existence with continual flashbacks of her previous life. We hear her voice talking to the reader. We become a witness to her history – her capture as a young girl and her life in a city with different masters. Her sorrow about her children. Her journey with her protectors. Then the ending – the survival in a baobab tree. I loved this book; the depth of imagery, personification and in-depth explanation. It was mesmerizing – the prose. The words will stay with me a long time. It was a lonely, melancholy read which will wake you up at night thinking about her plight. I give this book 4 stars.
Thank you Netgalley for letting me read this novel.
April 6, 2016
Disjointed lyrical descriptions drift from our protagonist's mysterious present, living alone in a baobab tree, to the episodes of her past as a slave, delineated by successive owners and a strange journey that borders upon the unreal. Perhaps it's my unfamiliarity with South Africa, but time period and location seem rather difficult to pin down, though the abolition of slavery across the British empire in the 1830s seems to give one limit. The experience of reading this was odd, perhaps even moreso because I read the first half in very short chunks, but seems to switch subject and location with an unannounced suddenness between paragraphs, perhaps moving as the mind does through diaristic observation and memory.
December 15, 2014
coetzee has a very nice intro for this so be sure and try to get that edition.
a slave hides, and lives inside a boabab tree and most of this novel takes place in her head, thinking about her past, and present. but also some abut her surviving alone in the bush, living in her tree.
karen does a wonderful job talking abut the difficulties of reading this difficult book , and the rewards, most aptly, here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
for the completeist who reads all the books about people living inside trees.
a slave hides, and lives inside a boabab tree and most of this novel takes place in her head, thinking about her past, and present. but also some abut her surviving alone in the bush, living in her tree.
karen does a wonderful job talking abut the difficulties of reading this difficult book , and the rewards, most aptly, here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
for the completeist who reads all the books about people living inside trees.
October 6, 2015
Read for Modern Fiction course. Not as bad as I thought it would be, the rambling narrative started to grow on me. Not a huge fan of the ending, I assumed that she would want to attempt to rejoin society once the hunters started leaving her gifts, rather than descend into what seemed like madness.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 25, 2014
If you read this book, do it in one sitting. Feast upon it, it is worth it.
October 18, 2019
okuduğum farklı eserlerden biri. Bunun sebebi yazarın kullandığı farklı kendine has dil ve öykünün kurgulanma şekli. Olay akışı alıştığımız giriş, gelişme ve sonuç mantığıyla ilerlemiyor, hikayenin ortasından başlayıp ilerledikçe hem geçmişe dair şeyleri öğreniyor hem de ana karakterle birlikte geleceğe ilerliyorSunuz.
Ben farklı anlatımını sevdim, özellikle çölde tek başına kalmak, sahip o|unan her şeyden vaz geçildiğinde hissedilebilecekler adına düşündürdücüydü bu yüzden 4 yıldız!
Ben farklı anlatımını sevdim, özellikle çölde tek başına kalmak, sahip o|unan her şeyden vaz geçildiğinde hissedilebilecekler adına düşündürdücüydü bu yüzden 4 yıldız!
June 21, 2019
A difficult read. The stream of consciousness type of storytelling is meant to strengthen the authenticity, but in my opinion only complicates things. The writing is at times beautiful but in some cases incomprehensible. At about 35% the action seemed to have come to a complete standstill and I gave up..
August 9, 2019
The Expedition to the Baobab Tree was written by Wilma Stockenström in Afrikaans and translated by J.M. Coetzee. It was originally published in 1981 and the English translation came two years later. I just happened upon it in the library and was intrigued by the description. I am a little bit obsessed with Baobab trees from The Little Prince and would love to see some one day.
The novel begins in a Baobab tree. Our narrator has no name but we soon discover she was once a slave. We do not know the circumstances which have brought he to her current place but we learn about her survival amongst the veld (South African meadowland) and the animals and how she marks the passing of time with beads. "I am reminded of my inferior position here, my lesser knowledge." she thinks. Soon her thoughts turn to her past and we begin to understand her life story and how her life had led her to the present.
This book is difficult because, though the prose is beautiful, the stream of consciousness is exactly what you might imagine someone alone in the wilderness might be thinking. It takes a good 20 pages or so to get used to it and grasp the narrative flow. The imagery is stark, sometimes violent, and elemental. The narrator devotes plenty of time to air, water, earth, and fire. Not only is she unnamed but she names no one else. The characters are refered to as the benefactor, the stranger, the eldest son, and the little people for whom she is a sort of goddess figure to. This leads the reader to feel very removed from everything just as the narrator is removing herself from her past. She talks about huge life changing events like her capture, enslavement, child loss in multiple ways, death, war, etc... all in passing comments, but devotes most of her time to the present.
This was a difficult read for me and took me far longer than I had planned, but I did enjoy it in a slow building way. Usually I give myself a good 100 pages to get into a book and as this was 113 I felt I should persist. Definitely not one I would recommend to everyone but a very interesting story in the end.
The novel begins in a Baobab tree. Our narrator has no name but we soon discover she was once a slave. We do not know the circumstances which have brought he to her current place but we learn about her survival amongst the veld (South African meadowland) and the animals and how she marks the passing of time with beads. "I am reminded of my inferior position here, my lesser knowledge." she thinks. Soon her thoughts turn to her past and we begin to understand her life story and how her life had led her to the present.
This book is difficult because, though the prose is beautiful, the stream of consciousness is exactly what you might imagine someone alone in the wilderness might be thinking. It takes a good 20 pages or so to get used to it and grasp the narrative flow. The imagery is stark, sometimes violent, and elemental. The narrator devotes plenty of time to air, water, earth, and fire. Not only is she unnamed but she names no one else. The characters are refered to as the benefactor, the stranger, the eldest son, and the little people for whom she is a sort of goddess figure to. This leads the reader to feel very removed from everything just as the narrator is removing herself from her past. She talks about huge life changing events like her capture, enslavement, child loss in multiple ways, death, war, etc... all in passing comments, but devotes most of her time to the present.
This was a difficult read for me and took me far longer than I had planned, but I did enjoy it in a slow building way. Usually I give myself a good 100 pages to get into a book and as this was 113 I felt I should persist. Definitely not one I would recommend to everyone but a very interesting story in the end.
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