In this Book
- Absent. The English Teacher: The English Teacher
- Book
- 2009
- Published by: Weaver Press
summary
When Mr George loses his job teaching English at a private secondary school in Bulawayo, �his pension payout, after forty years of full-time service, bought him two jam doughnuts and a soft tomato.� When he backs his uninsured white Ford Escort into a brand new Mercedes Benz, the out-of-court settlement sees him giving up his house to the complainant, Beauticious Nyamayakanuna, and becoming her domestic servant. Through the prism of this engaging post-colonial role reversal, and spiced with George�s lessons on Shakespeare, John Eppel draws down the curtain on one particular white man in Africa. But before it�s time to go, George will delight us with the antics of his literature classes; his various arrests � all timed to coincide with the police chief�s need for help with essays on Hamlet and A Grain of Wheat; his keen eye for flora and fauna; and the long trek back through the hundred years of his family�s Zimbabwean past, as he returns an abandoned child to her home. Eppel has satirized the racial politics of southern Africa in many of his previous novels. In Absent: The English Teacher he turns his gaze inwards for a generous and richly rewarding parody of the land of his birth.
Table of Contents
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- About the Author
- p. v
- Dedication
- p. xvii
- 1. Pale Moon Rising
- pp. 1-4
- 2. A Glint of Copper
- pp. 5-12
- 3. A Weekend in Elsinore
- pp. 13-26
- 4. Wabenzi
- pp. 27-28
- 5. Letting Slip
- pp. 29-32
- 7. For She My Mind Hath So Dispac'd
- pp. 39-44
- 8. A Hard Day's Night
- pp. 45-56
- 9. Deus ex Machina
- pp. 57-63
- 11. Reason Not...
- pp. 69-74
- 12. ...The Need
- pp. 75-81
- 13. Words, Words, Words
- pp. 82-87
- 14. Return to Elsinore
- pp. 88-95
- 15. Doing It
- pp. 96-101
- 16. The Enormous Turnip
- pp. 102-107
- 17. Salmagundi
- pp. 108-113
- 18. A Sentence is but a Chev'ril Glove...
- pp. 114-121
- 19. Long Day's Journey
- pp. 122-128
- 20. Into Night
- pp. 129-135
- 21. Westering
- pp. 136-141
- 22. George Jorge George of the Bushveld
- pp. 142-145
Additional Information
ISBN
9781779221155
Related ISBN(s)
9781779220820
MARC Record
OCLC
646886048
Pages
164
Launched on MUSE
2013-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No