Review
The Camel Bookmobile is Masha
Hamilton's third book following her excellent 2004
novel,
The Distance Between Us. 36-year-old New
Yorker, Fi Sweeney, is on a mission to find meaning
in her life by "making a difference". Next stop
Kenya, to take a job as titular head of the camel
bookmobile. Fi knows about books and means well, but
she knows very little about Kenya, and even less
about the semi-nomadic tribes that the mobile
library serves, who are a mystery to most
city-dwelling Kenyans, let alone to foreigners.
The reality of bringing literacy to Africa is
turning out to be quite different to her rose-tinted
vision - the library head is unresponsive to her
ideas for improving the program and she finds some...
Beyond the Book
As a foreign correspondent for a
decade,
Masha Hamilton
chronicled events overseas,
first working for the Associated
Press in the Middle East and
then later, in Moscow, reporting
for the Los Angeles Times,
writing a newspaper column, and
reporting for NBC/Mutual Radio.
Hamilton covered the intefadeh,
the peace process, and the
partial Israeli withdrawal from
Lebanon, as well as the coup and
collapse of the Soviet Union,
the growing independence in
Soviet republics, and Kremlin
politics. Early in 2004, she
worked in Afghanistan as a...
