The Train of Salt & Sugar by Licinio De Azevedo
By Phyllis Rhodes • Sep 27th, 2008 • Category: Book Review •
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I finished The Train of Salt & Sugar and I am still digesting it.
It is not a perfect novel, but it is a short, touching one. It is a reminder to me how clueless we are to the suffering that Africans endured under colonialism and the civil wars that resulted from their move to independence. These people went through (and in some regards are still living in) HELL!
The story is set in 1987 — a time when I was roaming the campus and my only worry was an upcoming exam — a time when I had NO clue of what was going on in Mozambique. Yet, here in this story — what would normally have been a 10-hour train ride turns into 2.5 weeks where they faced starvation, countless merciless attacks by rebels, saboteurs that destroyed the trail tracks that slowed their progress to a crawl.
It forced me to research the country, its history, and current state…so I learned as a result of picking up this book….and that made it worth it.
Phyllis Rhodes
APOOO BookClub
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Phyllis Rhodes is a systems engineer with a major defense contractor and adjunct professor at two local universities in Orlando, Florida. A lifelong bibliophile, she founded the Nubian Circle Book Club in 2001 and is a freelance book reviewer for the Orlando Sentinel, APOOO Exchange Team, and Amazon.com. As a consummate fan of the arts, she supports local and national theatre, literary events, and Afrocentric festivals, exhibits, and historical tributes. When not traveling, teaching, or reading, she researches her family history and applies her talents across a host of professional organizations chartered to sustain and uplift the African American community
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This is one Heck of a review… I am going to have to add it to my list and keep you posted Phyllis….