• "In Griot Time"-- A MAJOR TRAVEL LITERATURE EVENT!  Lovers of V. S. Naipaul's nonfiction will delight in a new book on travel in Africa, "In Griot Time: An American Guitarist in Mali."  Written by a former student of Naipaul, Banning Eyre of National Public Radio and Boston Phoenix fame, this astonishingly good book rivals and even surpasses Naipaul in the very areas Naipaul excels.  The writing recalls Naipaul's best, with a fresh new vibrance, yet mature with a quiet, intelligent masculinity, reflecting Eyre's years of magazine and newspaper work.  The Canadian Eyre masterfully takes the best of his teacher's legacy, then expands it, using his relative youth and considerable musical skills to show us a fascinating view of travel not as a writer or tourist but as a working musician and student of Malian styles, a view requiring a stamina and persona more reminiscent of Hemingway than Naipaul.   Eyre lived seven months in Mali, studying native guitar styles with the nation's greatest guitarists.  His vivid prose will carry you deep into Africa, where you will live those months along with him, seeing the land, learning its history, getting to know its people, and, with the companion CD available soon, even hearing its music. Eyre is truly an exciting and important new voice in travel literature.  The first printing is already on backorder; one can only hope that the publisher quickly produces a second printing.  Read it if you can. NOT TO BE MISSED.   
  
  
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  In Griot Time : An American Guitarist in Mali
  Author: Banning Eyre
  Paperback - 280 pages (May 2000)
  Temple University Press
  ISBN: 566397596
  Subjects: Travel, Africa, Mali, Music
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[Note: A modified form of this review has subsequently been posted at Amazon.com.]