En otros tiempos, era un buscavidas callejero de los bajos fondos conocidos como el Budayén. Ahora, Marid Audran se ha convertido en aquello que más odiaba. Ha perdido su orgullosa independencia para pasar a ser un títere de Friedlander Bey, aquel que mueve los hilos, y a trabajar como policía. Al mismo tiempo que buscaba la forma de enfrentarse a sí mismo y al nuevo papel que le ha tocado adoptar, Audran se topa con una implacable ola de terror y violencia que golpea a una persona que ha aprendido a respetar. Buscando venganza, Audran descubre verdades ocultas sobre su propia historia que cambiarán el curso de su propia vida para siempre.

review of
George Alec Effinger's A Fire In The Sun
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 3, 2018

Yet another writer I'd never heard of. I liked the cover art. Got the bk cheap at my favorite local used bkstore. Was reluctant to get it b/c it's the 2nd bk in a series & the store didn't have the 1st one. Turned out the novel's setting is Africa. That was a bit strangely coincidental b/c I'd recently read Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/617353-evelyn-waugh-writing-about-africa-pa... ) wch had an African setting, AND I read Mack Reynolds's Blackman's Burden / Border, Breed Nor Birth wch ALSO had an African setting. It seems that I'm on a little Africa roll. None of the authors, as far as I know, are African.

There're 14 bks of his listed inside. That's a fair amt of bks for an author I'd never heard of. I want MORE.

"George Alec Effinger's stories and novels have made his name significant in the science fiction field for nearly twenty years. "Wry and black and savage . . . there's a knife behind every smile," is George R. R. Martin's characterization of Ellinger's fiction." - p 191

&, yet, I'd never heard of him.

Back to the beginning, there's an Oscar Wilde quote: "Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them." That's attributed to Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel I enjoyed greatly 50 yrs or so ago.

This novel begins: "We'd ridden for many days out the coast highway toward Mauretania, the part of Algeria where I'd been born." (p 1) I've used Mauretania as an example of a country that still practices slavery:

"Slavery has been called "deeply rooted" in the structure of the northwestern African country of Mauritania, and "closely tied" to the ethnic composition of the country.

"In 1905, an end of slavery in Mauritania was declared by the colonial French administration but the vastness of Mauritania mostly gave the law very little successes. In 1981, Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery, when a presidential decree abolished the practice. However, no criminal laws were passed to enforce the ban. In 2007, "under international pressure", the government passed a law allowing slaveholders to be prosecuted. Despite this, the number of slaves in the country has been estimated by Global Slavery Index to be 43,000 (or 1.058% of the population) in 2015 and by the organization SOS Slavery to be up to 600,000 (or 17% of the population). Sociologist Kevin Bales and Global Slavery Index estimate that Mauritania has the highest proportion of people in slavery of any country in the world.While other countries in the region have people in "slavelike conditions", the situation in Mauritania is "unusually severe", according to African history professor Bruce Hall.

"The position of the government of Mauritania is that slavery is "totally finished ... All people are free", and talk of it "suggests manipulation by the West, an act of enmity toward Islam"."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Mauritania

I certainly don't trust a government spokesperson but that doesn't mean that it's unreasonable to imagine that anti-Islam forces wd maintain that slavery still exists in Mauretania in order to discredit them. SO, let's see whether I can find any Islamic sources that criticize Mauritania for still practicing slavery, shall we?

"Interview with Mauritanian human rights activist Biram Dah Abeid

""Time to end Arab racism"

"Today in Mauritania, children are still being born into slavery. Not only that, they will remain slaves for the rest of their lives. It is the most prevalent and most extreme expression of Arab racism in North Africa, says human rights activist Biram Dah Abeid and it is time to consign it to the past. By Claudia Mende

"Slavery has been officially banned in Mauritania for the past 36 years. In 2007 a new law was introduced that allowed slave owners to be prosecuted. What types of slavery still exist in the country in spite of this?

"Biram Dah Abeid: Many babies born in Mauritania come into the world as the property of others. According to the Global Slavery Index, up to 160,000 people in the country are currently living in conditions of slavery. The black Africans – Haratins – are often the slaves of the country's Arab-Berber elite, the white Moors, who make up about one third of the population. The Haratins are bonded to the family of their master, have no right to education, no civil rights, earn no money and are often forced to do very hard work.

"How is this tradition passed on?

"Dah Abeid: Traditionally the slaves are not sold; they are given away as children when the master's children marry and start their own families. Females are the property of the masters from birth, they are expected to gratify his sexual desires and are not permitted to refuse his advances. Alongside this traditional bondage, there are also some modern forms of slavery being practised.

"What's the difference?

"Dah Abeid: This involves black Mauritanians and migrants from other African countries. They are forced to do hard, poorly paid labour and are mistreated by their Arab-Berber masters. The men and children tend animals and the women are put to work as domestic servants under very harsh conditions.

"The Mauritanian government claims that traditional slavery is rare and restricted to the remoter areas of the country.

"Dah Abeid: That simply isn't true. The government wants to play the whole thing down. Our organisation, the IRA (Initiative pour la Resurgence du Mouvement Abolutioniste en Mauritanie) has freed many people from slavery over the years. We've also encountered cases where Haratins were being kept as slaves in some of the upmarket neighbourhoods in Nouakchott, where the ruling elite live."

- https://en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-mauritanian-human-rights-activist-b...

The person being interviewed is described as "Biram Dah Abeid, himself the son of freed slaves, has long campaigned for the rights of the Haratins. In 2013 he received the United Nations Human Rights Award for his commitment to their cause." & the article's from 2017.

Nonetheless, let's continue w/ some critical reading research. The publication that the article appeared in is described on Wikipedia thusly:

"Qantara.de (Arabic: قنطرة‎ qanṭarah, meaning "bridge") is an Internet portal in German, English, and Arabic, designed to promote intercultural dialogue between the Western and Islamic worlds.

"The portal was founded on the initiative of the German Foreign Office, in reaction to the crisis ridden developments in relations to Islamic cultures in the wake of the shock of the September 11 attacks in the USA. Online since March 2003, the platform is jointly run by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), the Goethe-Institut (GI) and the German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), and is funded by the foreign office. The task of the joint dialogue project is to promote understanding between the various cultures, with the aim of combating ignorance and prejudice through knowledge.

"The editorial team works to publish writing by Western and Islamic authors who seek open and respectful discussion of both commonalities and controversial subjects. These have included diverse contributors, like the Egyptian literary scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, the German former diplomat and Muslim Murad Hofmann, the Islam theologian Halima Krausen, the conflict researcher Heiner Bielefeldt and the physicist Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantara.de

SO, can it be trusted? After all, it's the product of the German Foreign Office.. so, nah, it probably can't be completely trusted. I decided to try searching in a prominent Arabic newspaper so I picked

"sharq Alawsat الشرق الاوسط
Asharq Alawsat الشرق الاوسط is a premier pan-Arab daily newspaper, printed simultaneously on four continents in 12 cities."

& waddya know, I got this 'error message':

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server."

Interesting. Who forbids it? What about

"Al Jazeera الجزيرة بالانجليزي
Al Jazeera الجزيرة بالانجليزي is an international news network headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Initially launched as an Arabic news and satellite TV channel, Al Jazeera has since expanded into a network with several outlets, including the Internet and specialty TV channels in multiple languages."

They have a reputation for being critical of 'The West'. I could access their website so I did a search & got this:

"Your search - Mauretania slavery - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "Mauretania slavery" ."

OOPSIE! I misspelled it. I corrected the search to "Maritania slavery" &, yep, waddaya know, there's plenty on that:

"Thirteen anti-slavery activists in Mauritania on trial for "rebellion and use of violence" told a court on Monday that they had been tortured during their detention, their lawyer said.

"They were arrested last month after a protest in a Nouakchott slum community that was being forcibly relocated as the West African country prepared for an Arab League summit.

""One by one, the 13 spoke out against the forms of torture they had been subjected to in custody", according to lawyer Brahim Ould Ebetty, representing the members of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement.

"He added that the campaigners demanded that "proceedings be brought against the torturers they have mentioned by name".

"The 13 are accused of rebellion, use of violence, attack against public authority, armed assembly and membership of an unrecognised organisation, which carries a potential fine and a jail term of up to two years.

"The Nouakchott slum was home to many so-called Haratin - a "slave caste" under a hereditary system of servitude whose members are forced to work without pay as cattle herders and domestic servants.

"About 10 police officers were injured during the protest, according to local officials.

"Hereditary systems of slavery still exist in Mauritania despite an official ban, where those belonging to "slave castes" are forced to work as cattle herders and domestic servants without pay."

- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/mauritania-anti-slavery-activists-torture...

SO, let's give a big WE-HATE-YR-GUTS-SHITBAGS to the Mauritanian ruling elites. If John Brown, version 21st century, were to kill-'em-all-&-let-Allah-sort-'em-out I wdn't exactly cry over it. Interestingly, despite slaving being ostensibly illegal in Mauritania, I didn't find a single article about slave owners being arrested, only abolitionists:

"Your search - Mauritanian slavers arrested - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "Mauritanian slavers arrested" ."

Same deal for a search for "Mauritanian Slave Owners Arrested". That tells me that it's the same old shit, right? The political activists get demonized while the old money criminals keep right on keepin' on.

End of tangent.

"Back home in the city, Saied thought it was beneath him to earn money. He liked to sit in cafés with me and Mahmoud and Jacques, all day and all evening. His little chicken, the American boy everybody called Abdul-Hassan, went out with older men and brought home the rent money." - p 3

Note that Effinger has the young male prostitute be an "American boy". Is he trying to avoid offending Africans? Not much point in denying the commonness of young male prostitutes in African countries. Maybe I've just read too much William S. Burroughs but I've always thought of Africa as a Mecca for such things.

"A new trend of commercial sex tourism that targets young boys has emerged in the coastal town of Malindi . It is alleged that boys from poor families are being lured into the trade by rich tourists.

"Malindi Sub county deputy commissioner Joshua Nkanatha and Malindi police Boss Kiprono Lang'at confirmed that the cases are rising in the resort town. Speaking at HGM primary school during a Public Baraza Nkanatha said male prostitution was high in Malindi and contributed to increased cases of HIV and AIDS. "A survey we conducted shows that boys engaging in sexual activities with male tourists are buying pampers because they can no longer hold their stool," he said. Lang'at on his part urged the public to take responsibility and enlighten the youths about the health risks of engaging in the vice."

- http://allafrica.com/stories/201308201256.html

Then again, maybe it's the tourists who deserve most of the 'credit', eh?

I'd call this "Cyberpunk". It has that 'gritty' noir plot augmented by some futuristic touches:

"They liked Saied. He could make people like him whenever he wanted. That talent was programmed into an add-on chip snapped into his bad-ass moddy. With the right moddy and the right daddy chips, it didn't matter where you'd been born or how you'd been raised. You could fit in with any sort of people, you could speak any language, you could handle yourself in any situation. The information was fed directly into your short-term memory. You could literally become another person. Ramses II or Buck Rogers in the 25th century, until you popped the moddy and the daddies out." - p 4

"A few minutes later, I was back in the modshop on Fourth Street. Twice in one day was enough of Laila to last anybody a year. I overheard her discussing a moddie with a customer. The man needed something to let him do armadontia. That's the science of converting human teeth into high-tech weapons." - p 232

It's too bad I missed the 1st bk but at least I got a little flashback taste from this one:

"Once upon a time I'd had to kill a few people, mostly in self-defense. More than one club owner had told me never to set foot in his bar again. After that, a lot of my friends decided that they could do without my company" - pp 14-15

Effinger drops in a few literary references: "I have vodka gimlets, because that's what Philip Marlowe drinks in The Long Goodbye." (p 16) "A line of American fiction occurred to me: "If you lose a son it's possible to get another—but there's only one Maltese falcon."" (p 285) So he likes Raymond Chandler & Dashiell Hammett — so do I. He doesn't base the whole novel around these references, tho, & I'm somewhat relieved that he didn't. I admit to having gotten somewhat burnt out on that type of writerly strategy w/ Jay Russell's Brown Harvest (see my review here: "Diarrhea Harvest: Wet Fart": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/527150-diarrhea-harvest?chapter=0 )

Jump ahead 188pp from page 15, thusly missing most of the plot:

""How are you feeling, Mr. Audran?" said Dr. Yeniknani. He came up next to my bed and smiled down at me. His strong teeth looked very white against his swarthy skin and his big black mustache. "May I seit down?"

""Please, make youself comfortable," I said. "So are you here to tell me that the fire baked my brain, or is this just a friendly call?"

""Your reputation suggests that you don't have much brain left to bake," he said. "No, I just wanted to see how you were feeling, and if there's anything I can do for you."" - p 193

Kachink! If this were the present in the USA, that little 'friendly' visit to the patient's bedside might pay the doctor a minimum of $500 for, essentially, doing nothing. ( )

An improvement over the first novel in the series but still feels pretty lackluster in a lot of ways - I had 90% of the plot pegged halfway through the book. ( )

The techno and social cyberpunk element is in full force in this novel, whether it comes from grifting, thugging, or betrayals. The second novel in the trilogy feels almost like a day/night alteration in the MC after he's left open to so many enormous mods to his brain and spinal column, in how he has not only come to grips with and uses all the tools now in his toolbox despite his fear.

But this isn't only a novel of coming to grips with what is now himself, altered. It's also a novel about coming to grips with his family, his co-workers, of getting justice even though he has become an enforcer for a Muslim kingpin, of coming to grips with his old compatriots who had shunned him after he did what he had to do in the previous novel.

The world set around 200 years in the future is gloriously detailed and fascinating, while still remaining the same old shithole of Noir storytelling... in other words, it's still very much a cyberpunk tale, but the focus is more on power and dominance and just trying to eke out a niche in his world of steadily decreasing choices. Drug abuse helps, some, but he finds out that squashing his enemies is much more satisfying.

And more than anything, these are absolutely character novels. Marid is fascinating and complex and I can't help but feel sorry for him; he's a tragic figure that's modded to become a perfect tool... the perfect opposite of what he'd always wanted for himself.

And then the reveals are pretty sweet and tragic, too, because now he has even less ability to break free. I can't wait to see how the third and last novel plays out. This is very readable and steeped in a very non-western attitude, which only adds a lot of spice to the cyberpunk. :)
( )

II° capitolo delle avventure nell'immaginario quartiere arabo del Budayeen per questo eroe/anti-eroe investigatore privato nel primo cap., adesso una sorta di poliziotto/tirapiedi di un potente della città, soprannominato "papà".
Di molto inferiore al I° capitolo, resta cmq una lettura gradevole e scorrevole ... un romanzo giallo che di fantascientifico ha (molto) poco ma che si può consigliare sicuramente. ( )