The Sky and the Forest

by C.S. Forester

Book Overview

Loa was not just king of his Central African tribe, he was a god to his people. He controlled life and death in his village. Then he turned outward and conquered his neighbors. He felt very fierce.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000IN8EKW
• ISBN13: 9781111511234
• Release Date: January 1948
• Publisher: Little
• Length: 313 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.

Customer Reviews

REALISTIC JUNGLE ADVENTURE

What makes this book especially interesting is that it is told from the viewpoint of a brutal cannibal. Early in this novel, Loa, the god-king of an obscure Congolese tribe, gets irritated with his first wife because she is nagging at him. Since meat is scarce, he ponders whether he should have her killed so he could eat her. When I read this, my first thought was that Forester was writing an adolescent adventure novel, and that he knew nothing about actual Africans. This first impression proved to be quite wrong. Though Loa's society is degenerate, there actually were, and perhaps are, such societies, and Forester portrays Loa's with sympathetic, though grim, realism. And as the reader discovers, Loa's cruelty is naïve and unsophisticated; he learns and applies real evil from his white captors. For someone who loved Burroughs's Tarzan novels as a kid, it was a real treat to find this realistic account of Africa at the point when Africans first encountered white "civilization." This is a great book not only from the both the historical and anthropological, perspective, but also from the perspective of adolescent jungle adventure.

Forester's single great work.

I love C.S. Forester's writing. I've read the Hornblower series so many times I've worn out a set or two, loaning them to friends and acquaintances. But I don't pretend the Hornblower series is anything more than a fun, interesting journey through the life of an imaginary man.The Sky and the Forest is another matter. Forester sets the novel deep in Africa at that crucial moment in history when the stone age metamorphosed overnight. This is no smileybook fantasy about the noble savage raped by intrusions of civilization. Forester's character is a human being living as humans lived in primitive environments and chronicals crucial, devastating events that change those lives when one culture succumbs to another. Forester might have chosen pre-Columbian America, pre-Coronadoan New Mexico, pre-Pizzaroan Peru, pre-Roman England or Gaul, or any of a thousand other places and times. This is a timeless novel about the human condition and shared human flaws by an author capable of doing them justice. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.