If you like Africa, you'll love this one

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	• A Time to Die Wilbur Smith Fawcett Gold Medal Books, 1991 - 484 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Loved It

I always enjoy Wilbur Smith, I felt like I'd learned something with this book as well as being entertained. Just couldn't put it down!

If you like Africa, you'll love this one

Retired guerrilla fighter Sean Courtney is over forty years old and facing the possibility of losing his professional hunting license. His long time friend and client Riccardo Monterro is approaching sixty and is hunting with Sean on his last safari accompanied by his beautiful twenty-six year old daughter Claudia. Hunting Tukutela, a grand old bull tusker who may carry the heaviest set of ivory in all of Africa the three of them along with an entourage of black trackers and gun bearers tenaciously follow the old bull across the border into war torn Mozambique.

Caught up in the revolution Sean encounters one of his most bitter enemies from his guerrilla days and finds himself and his friends in a desperate struggle for survival. Amidst the horrors of war he falls in love with young Claudia and she likewise falls in love with him, but the trick is to get out of Mozambique alive so that they can enjoy their new found love.

This is a tale loaded with Africana, from exotic wildlife, swarming insects, swamps, and vast wilderness to the political climate it is a story that can only be told by one who knows Africa as Wilbur Smith does. There is action, danger and romance along with such potentially volatile subjects as the African viewpoint of racism and wildlife management.

If there's one criticism that I have it's that chapter seven seems to come into the story awkwardly. That is not to say that it is not well written by any means. The only problem that I have with it is that at least for me it seems to interrupt the flow of the story. This chapter covers the life of Tuketela from the time of his birth until he is being tracked by the Courtney hunting party in his old age. With a bit of tweaking this chapter would make an interesting short story in itself, but if it were entirely ommitted from this novel the story would not miss a beat. This is a small criticism and should not deter readers in any way.

Last year I was introduced to Wilbur Smith when read The Diamond Hunters and I enjoyed it enough to seek out more Wilbur Smith. A Time to Die has a copyright date eighteen years more recent than The Diamond Hunters and as a tribute to Smith it is proof that good writers, like fine wine improve with age.

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Heart-pounding African adventure

This was my first Wilbur Smith book. Since then I've read just about every one of his novels, but A Time to Die is still my favorite. I have two copies, one for me and one to loan to friends. If you go for the hardcover (the paperback cover is much more pedestrian) be sure to get one with the dust jacket! This has to be one of the all-time great pieces of cover art. Explosions, flames, a charging elephant, a semi-naked woman, bad guys packing AK-47s, completely naked people, a roaring lion, more AK-47s, the sun setting over the African mountains...you've just got to read the book!

Having said that, A Time to Die completely lived up to my expectations. From the first safari scene to the final showdown with the terrorist guerillas, it's the kind of relentless battle for survival that can only take place in Africa.

I'd have to agree that sometimes Smith's dialogue sounds a little stilted, particularly in the romantic scenes, but I never found it off-putting. Just because no woman has ever talked to me like that, doesn't mean they never talk that way!

Some reviewers take offense at Smith's handling of racial issues. I don't know; put a white character and a black character together in a novel about Africa and somebody's bound to squeal racism. I figure Smith, as a South African, is a lot closer to the subject than I'll ever be, and I don't disregard his view just because he's white-that would be racist, wouldn't it?

A Time to Die takes place in Zimbabwe and Mozambique when the wounds from those countries' vicious race wars were still bleeding. (And hey, they're still bleeding now. Anybody who's followed the ongoing racial and intertribal violence in Zimbabwe since Mugabe took over has to agree that Smith pegged the situation pretty accurately.) This is an African's tale of what Africa is, not an Western fantasy of what Africa ought to be.

Sure, the bushman tracker Matatu is a subservient character, but so what? He frequently proves himself smarter than his "white master," and they both laugh about it. If all Smith's black characters were subservient, then I think you could go running to the NAACP, but throughout the book there's a complete spectrum of well-developed black characters, good and bad. Are these reviewers saying that no black African was ever subservient, or that no such character should ever be written so? I was more struck by the political correctness of their thinking than any racist content in the novel itself.

Anyway, to my mind this is a great African adventure. Plenty of thrills, but still touching thoughtfully on the live nerve of African politics. I think you can follow a literary history of Africa from Hemingway through Robert Ruark to Wilbur Smith and be better entertained every step of the way. When I wrote my own novel of Africa, A Time to Die was one of my inspirations.

-- Don Hollway, author of DANGEROUS GAME (ISBN 0741429497)

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Good story, dodgy subtext

Another great (if slightly over the top) romp from Wilbur Smith. No doubt it, the men are men and the women are powerless to their neanderthal charms in Smith's stories. It is a well-paced, suspenseful story, with plenty of blood & guts for good measure.

I am a big fan of Wilbur Smith, but in my view this one was a bit overblown. The characters are barely two-dimensional, let alone authentic, and some of the dialogue is woefully corny (eg, from p249: `Oh God, Sean, my darling, now we are alive an in love, but by tonight we could both be dead. Take me now.).

The political subtext also made me pretty uneasy. The entire novel, set in late 1980s Zimbabwe and Mozambique, carries a subtext throughout about how post-colonial Africa is going to the dogs because the white man has been deposed and the black man is now turning it into one big cess-pit. Written and set in the latter stages of apartheid in South Africa, the real underlying message appears to be a defence of white minority rule in that country, and a warning of the civil war and anarchy that would break out in that country if the whites gave up their power as the world was pressuring them to do at the time. I understand that some out there may agree with Smith's views but I feel it is an insult to hundreds and thousands of genuine, intelligent, compassionate Africans out there who strive to install institutions of democracy and justice in their respective countries.

In addition, I found the frequent references to Matatu, Sean Courtney's diminutive bushman tracker, as like a "faithful dog" whose only pleasure in life is to make his master happy quite offensive and became increasingly frustrating.

In the end, the main storyline was entertaining, but the characters and dialogue rather cliched, but all in all a decent way to kill a lazy weekend if you are happy to shut your brain off and just enjoy the story. However, if you are sensitive about race issues you might want to read something else.

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Other Books

Another of the Courtney books. This one follows the adventures of Sean Courtney in the bush. He is leading a big game expedition, with the help of a black tracker. A few problems are to be encountered, like the existence of a small war or two.

There is some extremely cheesy melodramatic dialogue, especially of the romantic variety.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

As the world around him burns with passion and death, professional hunter and guerrilla fighter Sean Courtney is trapped between his worst enemies, an overwhelming love for a woman, and his instincts to survive -- and kill.

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