![]() ![]() One of them has pursued worldly success, while the other, to her great credit, has evaded it, but they both seem to feel oppressed by a sense of wasted potential, a lost chance somewhere. In Asali Solomon’s new novel The Days of Afrekete, the two main characters wander through adulthood in a soft confusion, feeling they were meant for something better. ![]() The trap is that this is true, to a point, but the location of that point never stops moving. You can say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell. ![]() For this second set of people, time can easily be mistaken for a resource. It is also true, in a far subtler way, for the few billion whose circumstances allow them some illusion of control over their own lives. ![]() The gig worker, like the peasant farmer, wriggles in time as in a giant’s grip. This is overtly true for the billions of people who, owing to the present arrangement of things – an arrangement that is surely just and wise and not just a continuing handshake agreement between the stupidest of the powers and the meanest of the principalities – must spend nearly every second surviving. Book Tour is a bimonthly review by Phil Christman of new titles, each exploring a theme to trace hidden connections among books and writers. ![]()
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