by PeterMillar (Translator), Corinne Hofmann (Author)
The White Masai is at once a hopelessly romantic love story, a gripping adventure yarn, and, incidentally, a fine piece of meticulously observed social anthropology. It is also a compulsive read. Corinne Hofmann falls in love with a Masai warrior while on holiday with her boyfriend in Kenya. After overcoming all sorts of obstacles, she moves into a tiny shack with him and his mother in his village, and spends four years in Kenya. Slowly but surely the dream starts to crumble until she flees back home with her baby daughter born out of the seemingly indestructible love between a white European woman and a Masai. From close shaves with wild animals to the rigours of a subsistence existence in the bush, disease, malnutrition, hunger, ritual mutilation and, overriding it all, a consuming passion for another, almost wholly alien, human being, this is a book steeped in humanity: one which emphasises how much we all share, and how much has come to separate us. Simply unputdownable.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 300
Publisher: Arcadia Books
Published: 01 Sep 2005
ISBN 10: 1905147058
ISBN 13: 9781905147052
'I've been completely riveted by it - in fact haven't put it down all morning. What an amazing story!... one of the bravest and most vivid I've read in years and I'm not surprised it's a bestseller'
-- Deborah Maggach'Hofmann is a talented writer, describing with unflinching detail the consequences of a passion that combines the element of a holiday romance with troubling fantasies about the noble savage. Gripping'
-- Joan Smith * Independent *'This extraordinary story is a dashing tale of love and adventure in contemporary Kenya'
-- Mavis Cheek * Daily Mail Critic's Choice *'A deliciously readable book - it really is possible to gulp it down in one long sitting'
* Mail on Sunday *'The White Masai has already sold four million copies in Europe and has now been turned into a big Hollywood film. Theses successes suggest that, in publishing terms at least, Corinne Hofmann has finally struck gold'
* Ireland on Sunday *'An extraordinary and unputdownable tale'
* Bookseller *'It's a truly riveting read, better than any reality TV show'
* Publishing News *'Extraordinary'
* Hollywood Reporter *