Samson’s book came out in North America, published by Free Press, on 12 August. Since I forgot to post anything at the time, I thought I would copy here the original post for the British launch. It has been updated to include all the reviews so far.
The Jive Talker is published in the UK by Jonathan Cape, Random House. It is available in North America under the title, “The Jive Talker: An Artist’s Genesis”, published by Free Press, a Simon & Schuster imprint.
“one of the funniest books I’ve read in years” – Gary Indiana, author of Do Everything in the Dark and The Schwarzenegger Syndrome
“Samson Kambalu has a beguiling voice, and The Jive Talker delivers the charming and rare story of Kambalu’s coming of age as an artist in Malawi.” – Daniel Bergner, author of In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa
“Funny, sad, shocking, pacey, bursting with energy and talent.” – Barbara Trapido, author of Temples of Delight and Frankie & Stankie
“… a lively, funny memoir … A pleasure to read, and just the thing to give to a disaffected teenager of a creative bent.” – Kirkus Reviews, New York
“… a wickedly dry memoir … Kambalu’s memoir comprises brief, ironical anecdotes and hilarious cameos of “raving eccentrics” …” – Publishers Weekly
“[Kambalu's] fumbling discovery of girls and pop music, his trials at the ‘Eton of Africa’ Kamuzu Academy and an interlude in South Africa where everyone rips him off, are humorously recounted but poverty and sickness, and above all Aids, add dark textures to Kambalu’s philosophy.” – Metro
“… some cutting observations of life in one of the poorest parts of Africa … The book has a poignancy and an authenticity that are impossible to ignore.” – The Irish Times
“… this is no misery memoir. On the contrary, it is often very funny, as well as original and earnest … the portrait is framed by a thoughtful intelligence that looks far beyond the concerns of adolescence … this riveting, brilliant book” – Susan Williams, The Independent
“This Malawian-born, award-winning conceptual artist uses his background and brilliant mind to craft a truly original book.” – Pride Magazine
“… revealing and touching memoir …” – Jenny Wood, Perthshire Advertiser
“The Jive Talker story [moves] beyond a mere personal account to make clearer Kambalu’s personal idiom in his life as an artist and make plain some of his ideas in art.” – The Daily Times, Malawi.
“In this ingenious, often seditious, book, Samson Kambalu takes no artistic license, writing with witty and powerful prose. The Jive Talker takes you into a period of African history that has rarely been touched on before.” – Travel Africa Magazine.
“It is an African memoir unlike any other I have read … it is absolutely hilarious … the young Samson, a kind of black Huckleberry Finn, full of courage and appetite … Kambalu relates all this with a child’s pinpoint sense of the absurd … Kambalu’s triumph is to give us a portrait of Africa which for once is multidimensional … this is a book filled with wonder, humour and hope. It is a magnificent achievement.” – Aminatta Forna, The Sunday Telegraph.
“[If] the eyes are the windows of the soul, the voice is the door to the logos. Walk in and take the full guided tour (with stereophonic sound effects) … Life wasn’t an idyll, but it was largely ideal. Read Kambalu, cry, clap your hands.” – Iain Finlayson, The Times.
“Samson has composed a brilliant autobiography. In eloquence and style of presentation, it matches the famous Barack Obama autobiographies … There is fun … I am sure that if the book had been written by a white man, he might have been kinder in his portrayal of Malawi.” – Gedion Nkhata, The Sunday Times, Malawi.
” … it’s a pleasure to have one’s memory sparked by so much well-observed detail … The material covered in The Jive Talker, which charts the ordinary life of a modern Malawian teenager in country and city from his own perspective, has never before been explored … The scenes describing the death of his father, the former fount of all knowledge to whom antipathy is later developed, are riven with contradictory passion … A sense of cleanly freedom – of “exercise” and “exorcise” – permeates this enjoyable book. Football playing and fun are presented as the necessary correctives to Banda’s Presbyterian gloom and the grimness of disease. The revolving heart of The Jive Talker, the Holy Ball idea will be Kambalu’s passport to Amsterdam and then the London art scene, where he continues to kick charmingly about, the living embodiment of good news from Africa.” – Giles Foden, The Guardian.
“His father … gave his son enough material to work with to have mightily pleased V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Henry Miller, to name just three writers who seem to have contributed to Kambalu’s antic, Rabelaisian wit … this wildly readable and entertainingly ribald and roughneck book … A real wildman, this. Just read his discourses on rock ’n’ roll and his school band the Crazy Cops and how artist and finger-hardened rocker mate. A remarkable book from a unique sensibility and personality.” – Jeff Simon (Editor’s Choice), The Buffalo News.
“Kambalu’s memoir, The Jive Talker, is another form of exorcism and exercise, a literary, polyphonic performance of exuberance and delight … his tone in this memoir is surprisingly witty, and tautly composed anecdotes create a rollicking and rapid-fire pace … He is a master of the crystallizing and riotous anecdote and is Dickensian in his ability to bring characters to life.” – Joscelyn Jurich, bookforum.com.
“Kambalu’s writing shines with absurdist observational wit. He also deftly interjects relevant Malawian cultural and social history to reinforce his personal narrative. And although his experiences may be less decadent than those of self-crucifying Dandy in the Underworld author Sebastian Horsley, Kambalu’s off-kilter memoir is equally worthy of examination.” – Michael Sandlin, TimeOut New York.
“an unusual picture of Africa, multi-dimensional, comic as well as tragic, and palpably real.” – London Review Bookshop.
You can read more at The Root Magazine, which published a section from the first chapter to mark Father’s Day. If you have a Barnes and Noble account, you can also read the first 30 pages or so of the American Free Press (Simon & Schuster) edition here.
The Jive Talker is on sale now, and can be ordered from (amongst others) Amazon, Borders and Random House.
Find out more about The Jive Talker and Samson’s work at his Holyballism website.
