Masai Dreaming

by Justin Cartwright

Haunted by his dreams of the Masai, Tim Curtiz journeys to East Africa to research and write a screenplay about the enigmatic Claudia Cohn-Casson, an early anthropologist betrayed to the SS upon her return to France during the war. By the author of Look at It This Way.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Kenya, Africa

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Justin Cartwright (born 1945) is a British novelist.

He was born in South Africa, where his father was the editor of the Rand Daily Mail newspaper, and was educated there, in the United States and at Trinity College, Oxford. Cartwright has worked in advertising and has directed documentaries, films and television commercials. He managed election broadcasts, first for the Liberal Party and then the SDP-Liberal Alliance during the 1979, 1983 and 1987 British general elections. For his work on election broadcasts, Cartwright was appointed an MBE.

Cartwright had a wife, Penny, and two sons.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just couldn't get into this one, or develop a rapport with any of the characters. Despite usually liking this author.
The fault may be mine.

[Zaira Zepahua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buscaba un libro que iniciara con la letra S, encontré este en la biblioteca por casualidad, o bueno, ya que me había cansado de buscar. Llamó mi atención la portada, también lo hizo la reseña. Decidí sacarlo. Gran elección. No podría decir sí es una obra maestra, pero no puedo aceptar que no lo es. (Creo que no me hago entender)
Es un libro que vale muchísimo la pena, con sus 308 pág. Descubrí dos animales, que no tenía idea de que existían, un idioma, y una perspectiva diferente de, lo que lamentablemente todos hemos normalizado, la segunda guerra mundial. Creo que es un libro complicado, ya que 1 la forma en que está escrita es rara, un poco revuelta, al principio creí que al autor así le había salido, pero creo que lo ha hecho completamente a posta. Es un mal borrador de guión para una película, pero en libro. Pero chido, digo, no sé si me explico. 2 Es una historia con sorpresas. 3 Incluye dialogos, en frances y en alemán. 4 Hace muchas reflexiones intelectuales que creo yo muchos pueden disfrutar, y probablemente también los antropólogos y sociologos, tal vez no, pero siento que ellos entenderían mejor algunos matices de lo que yo, al menos, pude hacerlo.
"Una novela de gran agudeza sobre las atrocidades que cometemos cuando transformamos la historia en un motivo romántico, un cuento moral o una teoría social... Una sátira sobre las vulgares fantasias hollywoodienses... Un libro sobre los límites del arte y de la razón (Linda Simon)"

[Jayne Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the title and the focus on the Masai people, an unusual and educational theme for a novel. When I picked it up I realised there was no synopsis provided anywhere on the cover or on the initial pages; nothing, in fact, to mark it out as a novel. Luckily this is one of those authors I would read irrespective of subject, but in places this did have the feel of a non-fiction book. And accordingly one gets the impression that it might be possible to skip a couple of chapters here and there and still find it useful. It does tend to go backwards and forwards over the same ground. The narrator of the story is trying to write the screenplay for a film based on real events, and we see him research the events, muse over them, discuss them with people who were actually there, and finally draft his scene. The picture is therefore built up layer by layer; I could imagine some readers finding this irritating though I liked it, along with the dense, intelligent, analytical prose.

As the novel progresses it becomes clear that it isn’t all about the Masai: a good proportion of it is about the Holocaust, and specifically the deportation of Jews from France. An unusual combination of themes and settings but one of the most graphic and hard hitting portrayals of the Holocaust I have encountered in literature.

And then there are the sparkling bits of dry wit. I loved the author’s description of the colobus monkey as looking “like a conventional monkey dressed up as the chancellor of a university”. This is the second of his books that have sent me scuttling off to Google Images in connection with some reference to natural history, and once again his description is spot on.

[Ruth Slavid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel interweaves the story of a French woman anthropologist who lived with the Masai in the 1930s and subsequently went to Auschwitz with a contemporary writer (in the 1990s) who is trying to write the script of a film about her life. he spends a lot of time in Africa, gets to know the Masai and also some people who knew her. It is absorbing, great images of Africa. The Hollywood/ parisian film scene feels less convincing, although quite entertaining. In the end, I had the feeling he was trying to make specific points but I was not sure what they were. Liked reading this, but I suspect I will forget it quite quickly.

[Rosalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give it four stars because of the multi-layered insights into the humans who people the drama and the attempt to link people from vastly different social realities. I like the way he links all human beings into a single category of humannness and non-humanness, cruelty and inhumanity. Rather than the separation of our societies into different social and economic categories. In this case, he counterposes the Masai of Tanzania to Nazi Germany. The book does have weaknesses, especially the structure starts to suffer from its own constrictions at the end. But its an amazing weaving of different perspectives into a single frame.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure about this one. It's a description of a film intercut with less cinematic descriptions of the events on which it is based and the tale of the person who wrote the film doing his research. There were a couple of twists at the end one, in the modern tale, about which I couldn't care less. Reflective passages and atmospheric word-painting could have been wonderful, but just made it drag and left Tim, the writer, oddly ill-defined.
Moving? Probably.
Cinematic? Obviously.
Pretentious? Just a little too much so for me.

[Val · Rating 2 out of 5]

A journalist is trying to write a script about a French-Jewish anthropologist who worked in East Africa and was a victim of the holocaust. The book is told in short fragments, which perhaps reflects the media of film and journalism instead of the more detailed treatment possible in other media.
This is almost a good book and the author is attempting to make a serious point about over-simplification of human stories, particularly with regard to race, but it missed the target for me. Other readers might enjoy it much more than I did.

[Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unmemorable novel about a journalist making a movie script about a beautiful young anthropologist who was studying the Masai in Africa during WWII, who returned to Paris to rescue her Jewish father & young brother, but ends up apparently dying at Auschwitz (though a suprise ending reveals that she actually survived, only to commit suicide on her return trip to Africa with her lover).

[Stuart Finkelkraut II · Rating 4 out of 5]

Capturing each scene like a great florist, Cartwright delivers the passion, the fear, the smell of African heat & that of a sinister cattle train leaving Drancy, with vibrancy & precision. I could not put this book down, my only small critique being of the numerous cinematographic remixes of the possible ending.

[Lindsay]

A great finish, but a slow start. I almost gave up after the first fifty pages, but having read some of Cartwright's work before and enjoyed it I held out until the end. Definitely worth a read, but only by a patient and enthusiastic book-lover.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like reading about the Masai. And the story of the French-Jewish anthropologist and what happened to her in WWII felt like it was real. I don't think the whole cinema framing device was necessary, though- it was too obtrusive.

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really 3.5 but I liked he African bits and that was enough to raise it above average. I don't think the divided chapter bits suited all parts of the story and the Hollywood casting bit seemed bizarrely out of step with the rest of the book.

[Paige Nick]

As i finished this book, this book finished me.

[Chanel Worsteling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad I persisted with the book to the end but not sure it would make my recommended reading list.