Ractim

Author's Name: E.L. Doctorow

Upon its publication in 1975, Ragtime helped change the understanding of how novels were written and what they could reveal. A cohesive narrative fabric that was as experimental as it was original, the novel offered a portrait of the American spirit during the period of the twentieth century and the First World War. The novel opens in 1906 in New York, in the home of a well-to-do American family. On a lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Houdini knocks on their door after his car breaks down on the street in front of their house. Thus, Doctorow begins his first strand of fiction, weaving together real and imaginary threads, what happened and what didn't. He introduces real characters into the lives of this fictional family, revealing the conflicts that drove people's lives at that time; he brings in Freud, the goddess of beauty Evelyn, the Mexican revolutionary Zapata, and others, drawing paths for his fictional characters that open and others that close.






We learn with Thiong'o the value of knowledge, which colonialism withheld from the Kenyan people. He tells us about the emergence of formal education and independent, rebellious schools in Kenya. His dream, which he promised his mother he would spare no effort to achieve, was to learn. But how can a child cling to his dream amidst the shadows of World War II and his family crises? This childhood memoir serves as Thiong'o's testimony in defense of his right to dream, at least, despite all the difficulties, and of his mother's significant role in his life, which has led him to become one of Africa's greatest writers worldwide.