Wednesday, January 2, 2008

The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann

The four-million-copy international bestseller of the incredible love story between a European woman and an African warrior.

The White Masai combines adventure and the pursuit of passion in a page-turning story of two star-crossed lovers from vastly different backgrounds. Corinne, a European entrepreneur, meets Lketinga, a Samburu warrior, while on vacation in Mombasa on Kenya's glamorous coast.Despite language and cultural barriers, they embark on an impossible love affair. Corinne uproots her life to move to Africa—not the romantic Africa of popular culture, but the Africa of the Masai, in the middle of the isolated bush, where five-foot-tall huts made from cow dung serve as homes. Undaunted by wild animals, hunger, and bouts with tropical diseases, she tries to forge a life with Lketinga. But slowly the dream starts to crumble when she can no longer ignore the chasm between their two vastly different cultures.

A story that taps into our universal belief in the power of love, The White Masai is at once a hopelessly romantic love story, a gripping adventure yarn, and a compulsively good read.

I bought this book to read after my trip to Kenya and a Masai village in August 2007. It was a truly interesting read but for the life of me I can not understand what happened to this woman to keep her in Kenya with a man who, although she loved and he seemed to love her, treated her the way he did.

She left Switzerland, a First World country, and gave it all up to live in a mud hut with no running water. I also don't understand the emotion she must've felt to give up the life she knew after seeing a man only a few times over the course of a week.

But, that said ... it was an amazing book to read in terms of two vastly different cultures colliding. I lift my hat off to her for how determined she was and how hard she tried to make it work.

I'm curious to read the sequel ... but not enough to buy it, will have to investigate the local libraries.

Buy this book online at Amazon, Amazon UK, Kalahari or Loot

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