Three Famines

Keneally, Tom

3.43

185 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 1743105983 ISBN 13: 9781743105986

Publisher: Bolinda Audio, 2012

This is the story of three terrible famines. The first is an Gorta M�r, the great hunger of Ireland, which began in 1846. The second is the deadly famine that struck Bengal in 1943. The third is the Ethiopian famine, which first sprung up in lethal form in the 1970s under Emperor Haile Selassie and then reappeared under the brutal dictator Mengistu in the 1980s. Keneally visited Eritrea in 1984 to see the effects of this grave event.

Tom Keneally shares these three shocking histories with his customary penetrating wisdom, and he presents a controversial theory in his utterly compelling narrative: in all three famines, ideology, mindsets of governments, racial preconceptions and administrative incompetence were, ultimately, more lethal than the initiating blights, the loss of potatoes or rice or the grain named teff.

"I am sure Tom Keneally is incapable of writing a dull book" ―Andrew Riemer, Sydney Morning Herald

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Tom Keneally won the Booker Prize in 1982 with Schindler’s Ark, later made into the Academy Award-winning film Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg. He has written ten works of non-fiction, including his recent memoir Searching for Schindler. His novels The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Gossip From the Forest, and Confederates were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Parclete won the Miles Franklin Award. He lives in Australia.

Review:

"As reports of east Africa's famine continue to focus on drought and crop failure - natural rather than political causes - Three Famines provides a sharp and timely admonition... Keneally's writing is understated, sometimes to a fault. He witnessed the famine in Ethiopia, yet refuses to tell us what it looked or felt like. The tone is distant, but the occasional glimpses of individual suffering are all the more moving for it." Financial Times "Thomas Keneally...writes vividly about the depths to which human beings descend during famines... The book is both reportage of starvation and analysis of how famine is made. The 'politics' in his subtitle points to the fact that drought, blight and pestilence may be unavoidable but famine is a manmade phenomenon. This may be an elementary point, but it needs to be made time and again." Guardian "The human story of famine is told very well and passionately by Keneally, as one might expect from the author of Schindler's Ark." Irish Examiner"

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.