cover image The Jive Talker: A Memoir

The Jive Talker: A Memoir

Samson Kambalu, . . Free Press, $24 (320pp) ISBN 978-1-4165-5931-3

A Malawi artist now living in England, Kambalu delivers a wickedly dry memoir that reflects as much the coming-of-age of his impoverished, tiny African country as it does himself. Born in 1975 into a Christian family of eight—an Ngoni mother and a Chewa father with a missionary education—Kambalu spent a peripatetic childhood moving among remote villages at the whim of his father's work as a medical assistant, which provided the family starvation wages. Early memories of being plagued by parasites, malaria, jiggers and various evangelical sects coincide with a growing awareness of his father's temperamental outbursts—fed by alcohol, the “Jive Talker” of the title spewed snippets from Nietzsche and other philosophers to his wary children. By age 12 Kambalu was “Born Again,” then invented his own religion he called “Holyballism,” and eventually secured a much coveted spot at Kamuzu Academy, subsidized by Malawi dictator Banda and modeled on the best British public schools down to its brutal initiation rites. Kambalu's memoir comprises brief, ironical anecdotes and hilarious cameos of “raving eccentrics,” especially during his six-year tenure at Kamuzu. (Sept.)