The White Masai - Hardcover

Hofmann, Corinne

3.53

9,395 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1905147058 ISBN 13: 9781905147052

Publisher: Arcadia Books, 2005

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Corinne Hofmann recounts her story of holidaying in Kenya, where she falls head over heels in love with a Masai warrior. Despite the enormous cultural gulf between them, not to mention the lack of common language, Hofmann, a middle class Swiss boutique owner, gives up western life, to rejoin her Masai warrior and his way of life.

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Review:

'Extraordinary' * Hollywood Reporter * 'It's a truly riveting read, better than any reality TV show' * Publishing News * 'An extraordinary and unputdownable tale' * Bookseller * 'The White Masai has already sold four million copies in Europe and has now been turned into a big Hollywood film. Theses successes suggest that, in publishing terms at least, Corinne Hofmann has finally struck gold' * Ireland on Sunday * 'A deliciously readable book - it really is possible to gulp it down in one long sitting' * Mail on Sunday * 'This extraordinary story is a dashing tale of love and adventure in contemporary Kenya' -- Mavis Cheek * Daily Mail Critic's Choice * 'Hofmann is a talented writer, describing with unflinching detail the consequences of a passion that combines the element of a holiday romance with troubling fantasies about the noble savage. Gripping' -- Joan Smith * Independent * 'I've been completely riveted by it - in fact haven't put it down all morning. What an amazing story!... one of the bravest and most vivid I've read in years and I'm not surprised it's a bestseller' -- Deborah Maggach

Synopsis:

The White Masai is at once a hopelessly romantic love story, a gripping adventure yarn, and, incidentally, a fine piece of meticulously observed social anthropology. It is also a compulsive read. Corinne Hofmann falls in love with a Masai warrior while on holiday with her boyfriend in Kenya. After overcoming all sorts of obstacles, she moves into a tiny shack with him and his mother in his village, and spends four years in Kenya. Slowly but surely the dream starts to crumble until she flees back home with her baby daughter born out of the seemingly indestructible love between a white European woman and a Masai. From close shaves with wild animals to the rigours of a subsistence existence in the bush, disease, malnutrition, hunger, ritual mutilation and, overriding it all, a consuming passion for another, almost wholly alien, human being, this is a book steeped in humanity: one which emphasises how much we all share, and how much has come to separate us. Simply unputdownable.

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