Title: The Old Way: A Story of the First People
Author: Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Year: 2006
343 pages
Audiobook.
Read by the author, who is somewhat scratchy, but she's earned it. A more personal look at Thomas and her family as they sojourned among the Bushmen (not San, as she explains) in the area that is now Namibia. Thomas interweaves personal experiences with anthropological notes. Some of her assertions and questions seem right on target, while others cause me to raise a doubtful eyebrow because they seem too general, too reductive, or insufficiently supported, but it's clear that the tone is intended to be conversational and speculative. Often funny, often critical, and ultimately pragmatic, it is an enjoyable book alongside other longitudinal or contemporary accounts of southern Africa.
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