10WLA Book Club

The time was an early morning in the winter of 1941. Falling snow packed onto the hard  labourers  of Gulag  10 WLA as they begin setting off into the mines and factories somewhere in the far east. Malnourished, mistreated and muddy, the inhabitors of this typical Gulag were kept under strict control of General Victor, who gave harsh punishments to any prisoner who dared riot or worse, insult the government.   It was a normal evening. The prisoners were escorted back to the Gulag through the freezing taiga by cattle carriages. They waited in line for their daily rations: Rubbery potatoes, dried bread and lime water. If one behaved well and boasted high production, he/she would sometimes be rewarded with a small knob of fresh corn, a snack the guards would gladly feast on. General Victor was feasting on a large chicken when Archie, or formally, Guard Number One burst into his room reporting misbehaviour between two prisoners. Ben (Guard Number Two) and Mile...

Witi Ihimaera,  The Whale Rider —International Edition  (Reed Publishing, 2003), pp. 154. Ihimaera is arguably the most influential Maori author in existence, publishing the first collection of short stories by a Maori writer called  Pounamu Pounamu  in 1972. The following year, he followed suit by being the first Maori to author a novel— Tangi.  However, his  magnum opus  is indubitably his 1987  The Whale Rider.  Fifteen years later the film adaption was released, with the eminent Niki Caro as the supervising director and Keisha Castle-Hughe's entrancing performance as the protagonist. As one commentator accurately observed, "A film so specific to one area, and grounded so firmly in New Zealand and Maori culture, has enthralled audiences from different countries partly because of the universal theme of heroic triumph over adversity, but mainly because of Castle-Hughes' and [Rawiri] Paratene's stunningly natural and utterly convincin...

Theatre of the Gods by M. Suddain Theatre of the gods, written by M Suddain, is a book revolving around the adventures of explorer M. Francisco Fabrigas, a mysterious captain called The Necronaut, a blind alien girl, a deaf boy and a suspicious botanist. From what I could pick up most of their adventures consist of interplanetary and inter-universal journeys to strange and perilous places in which they are constantly on the brink of death. The book is told from the perspective of a supposed interviewer who has brought upon himself the task of extracting and documenting M. Francisco Fabrigas's many tales. Fabrigas himself is over a thousand years old and spends most of the story miraculously avoiding death despite how much he wants his adventures to be over with.    Despite my relatively short attention span, I found myself actually enjoying this book and its wide variety of quirky, mildly amusing characters (my favourite character was the Pope of the Holy Neon Emp...