Reviews and Comments

Didn't dislike it, just read far enough to get the point.

I stopped reading this because of the anti-Jewish historical distortions. Strident opposition to israel & zionism is good; along with the project of deploying literary criticism on the cultural front of a liberation war, it's what drew me to the work in the first place. But Kanafani insists on assimilationist understandings of alternative Jewish politics—rather than suggesting methods of self-determination that don't reinforce colonialism, or just saying nothing if he doesn't have any alternatives—& whitewashes arab & islamic empires' long track record of oppressing Jews & countless other peoples. I'd guess this flows from the pan-arabism that produced the PFLP, but maybe someone more knowledgeable about his intellectual development should speak on that.

The book includes a chapter arguing that Hezbollah is fundamentally hostile to Judaism & that this can't be reduced to or written off as a spinoff from their opposition to zionism & israel.

Why does the author recommend an "ex"-FBI body language specialist? Were there really no other options? I doubt it.

This is a very cut-and-dry report on the PAIGC's anti-colonial revolutionary war. It's broken into three main parts: first, background on the colony; the centerpiece, reporting on a journey across the nation-to-be with the party's leaders, who are interviewed and quoted at length; lastly, some comparative analysis with other revolutionary movements in Africa and latin amerika.

The book is fairly narrowly focused on practical how-a-revolution-gets-made questions, and it provides useful, clear answers to those questions. It's not really written to be a compelling story, though if you care about the Guinean revolution you'll likely find interesting stories in here anyway. The author's analysis is straightforward, and like others who actually spent time with the guerrillas he correctly observed that they were comeptent to a much greater degree than many of their contemporaries.

If you had to look up the acronym PAIGC, I might not recommend starting this book until the general story of 20th-century anticolonialism in Africa is more familiar to you. You'd probably get a lot more out of it that way.

I enjoyed the trilogy, but didn't find it particularly outstanding overall.

Not him listing "the rise of rampant homosexuality and bi-sexuality among both black men and women" as a problem. UGH.

The more I learn about the MPLA, the more they come across as the lesser of 3 evils rather than actually any good. Like…at least they didn't work with apartheid south africa??