Read Online Mandoa, Mandoa!: A Comedy Of Irrelevance Edited By Winifred Holtby Formatted As Paperback

is a book that is hard to get hold of now, and so although I would have preferred a virago edition of it to read I was glad of the chance to read it via kindle.
I really enjoyed this slightly unusual novel, Written in the wake of the general election of, and during the depression, it is an enormously intelligent political satire, Alongside the story of the launch of the new Mandoa is the story of the relationship between Maurice and Bill Durrant between whom there exists terrible sibling jealousy, and Jean Stanbury friend of the Durrants, who becomes involved with the campaign against the involvement of Prince's tours in Mandoa.
In this novel Holtby raises interesting questions about the modern's world verses a more primitive one, Many characters are amusing stereotypes and the vast differences of social conventions in Mandoan and European societies are hilariously highlighted, I found this a very readable novel, well written and although some aspects of the societies described are rather dated now, is interesting still, for what it can tell us about the time it was written.
Oh Winifred, why were you taken from us so prematurely What delights could have been ours had your pen not been stilled What moments of joy and laughter could we have experienced had there been time for even one more delightful novel

I

must admit that a story mostly set in a fictitious African country seemed more than a world away from the Yorkshire Wolds I had grown accustomed to reading about in Winifred Holtby's novels.
I was a little unsure, but I should have kept the faith, As a varied group of English visitors descend upon the African state of Mandoa, all with their own agendas, they find a country on the verge of breaking with its traditions and joining the modern world.
The business people among them want to stake their claim, the tourists want an authentic experience, and all get more than they bargained for,

This wonderfully comic book manages to satirise many aspects of the political world of thes, while not ignoring the worrying threats that were on the rise in Europe, or the more serious repercussions of the last faltering days of the British Empire.
Sometimes the characters and language can be quite shocking, especially concerning the attitudes to women one of Winifred Holtby's themes in all her novels and to the people of her invented country.
This is an intriguing, funny and highly enjoyable novel from a great novelist,

Mandoa is a small African state: at its head a Virgin Princess, conceiving immaculately further princesses, The old traditions remain undisturbed until Mandoas Lord High Chamberlain, Safi Tala, visits Addis Ababa, There he discovers baths and cocktail shakers, motor cars and cutlery from Sheffield, telephones and handkerchiefs, In short, he has seen an apocalyptic vision a new heaven and a new earth, Meanwhile in England it is, Maurice Durrant, youngest director of Princes Tours Limited, has won North Donnington for the Conservatives, His socialist brother Bill is unemployed and their friend Jean Stanbury loses her job on The Byeword, a radical weekly paper, How all three, and others too, find themselves in Mandoa for the wedding of the Royal Princess to her Archarchbishop is hilariously told in this wonderful satirical novel, first published in.
This is a really delightful book a satire, I suppose about a small emerging African nation that is just discoveringth century technology and luxuries, Don't you just hate it when you've discovered a magnificent writer, someone whose novels are right up there in the Pantheon, and then she goes and writes something clunky Mandoa, Mandoa is Winifred Holtby's notveryfunny take on British Imperialism in a fictional African Land during thes.
It had its moments, its enjoyable characters and situations, but mostly it was a slog through the sand, Dang. Holtby is pitch perfect in her native land, Yorkshire, She does not speak fluent Mandoanese, Mandoa, Mandoa! By Winifred Holtby was published inand its story takes place betweenandin England and in the fictional country of Mandoa which supposedly borders Abyssinia Ethiopia now, Somalia and Kenya.
Holtby had traveled extensively in Africa and seen at first hand the impact of colonialism on African cultures, An ardent socialist, she wrote this novel, her last, as a satire on these clashes of culture,

Mandoa is ruled by a princess, born of a virgin mother, who can only be succeeded by a daughter mysteriously born nine months after a visit by an archbishop who then gets promoted to archarchbishop.
The main export of Mandoa is slaves which are kidnapped from neighboring countries and sent on the Arabia with much ceremony once a year, The people are EthiopianPortuguese and Catholic, although they seem to have forgotten about most tenets of Christian faith,

It all begins to unwind when the Lord High Chancellor Safi Talal visits Abyssinia for a royal wedding and tastes the delights of western life cocktail shakers, puddings, electric lights, central heating, and the eternal youth of women aided by cosmetics not to mentions cars.
At about the same time, a newlyelected Conservative Member of the British Parliament, Maurice Durrant, who is also a director an adventure travel company, Princes Tours, discovers Mandoa and sees an opportunity to both make his name in Parliament and with his employer, Sir Joseph Prince.
As a result his estranged and somewhat at loose ends brother, Bill, is sent off to Mandoa to scope things out and see how both country and business can profit from an upcoming wedding of the ruling princesss daughter.


Holtby brings a great deal of humour to the narrative even as she points out in some detail how colonial powers, both governmental and commercial, blunder into cultures they do not even try to understand.
The underrated Bill Durrant actually makes a decent effort at getting know the people and the culture, and feels quite at home there while blissfully unaware of the fact that his continued existence is guaranteed by Talal through a monthly dispatch of slaves to his political rival, Safi Mabuta.
Holtby also does an excellent job of illustrating the importance of understanding how someone like Maurice Durrant must work through the labyrinthine networks of professional civil servants to get his ideas to a minister.
The VIP tourists that inaugurate the western style hotel built by Prince's Tours in Mandoa are enthusiastic travelers but are not so happy that the Mandoans might want to take advantage of things like plumbing and clean water because then they would no longer be primitive and therefore worth traveling to see.
The humanitarian society that threatens to label the government and Princes Tours as profiting from slavery adds to the mix of visitors to Mandoa stumbling around and wanting to do good.


The book is subtitled “A Comedy of Irrelevance”, but in the fictional Mandoa Winifred Holtby explores all the problems of culture clash and exploitation that she had seen at first hand in in other parts of Africa.
The humor always underlines her political points without making them meaningless and the themes of cultural blindness and exploitation were very prescient as we see the results of it in failing African countries today.

I'm not sure who exactly I would recommend this book to, but I'd do it wholeheartedly, What a bizarre, hilarious, and moving novel, One of the best books I've read recently, and one that will definitely be kept on my shelf,
It should be made into a stunning TV series, but these days there are too many political mantraps for that to happen,
She gives us wonderful three dimensional characters from the left and the right, the colonial and the colonised, with a sharp eye on political machinations of British and SubSaharan societies, all written with great humanity.

What a tragedy that this was her last book, written in haste and illness, Winifred Holtby was a committed socialist and feminist who wrote the classic South Riding as a warm yet sharp social critique of the well to do farming community she was born into.
She was a good friend of Vera Brittain, possibly portraying her as Delia in The Crowded Street, She died at the age of, .