"Ian McDonald - Tendeleo's Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

TENDELEO'S STORY
Ian McDonald

Here's a powerful, compassionate, and darkly lyrical story of a
young girl's coming-of-age in a future Africa that is literally
being eaten by an alien invader, and, after passing through that
invader's alien guts, as it were, is being trans-formed into
something rich and strange and totally unexpected. A sea
change that extends as well to the lives of the people who find
themselves in its way . ..

British author Ian McDonald is an ambitious and daring writer with a wide range and
an impressive amount of talent. His first story was published in 1982, and since then
he has appeared with some frequency in Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction, New
Worlds, Zenith, Other Edens, Amazing and elsewhere. He was nominated for the
John W. Campbell Award in 1985, and in 1989 he won the Locus "Best First Novel"
Award for his novel Desolation Road. He won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1992 for
his novel King of Morning, Queen of Day. His other books include the novels Out
on Blue Six and Hearts, Hands and Voices, Terminal Cafe, Sacrifice of Fools and
the acclaimed Evolution's Shore, and two collec-tions of his short fiction, Empire
Dreams and Speaking in Tongues. His most recent book is a new novel, Kirinya,
and a chapbook novella Tendeleo's Story, both sequels to Evolution's Shore. Born
in Manchester, England, in 1960, McDonald has spent most of his life in Northern
Ireland, and now lives and works in Belfast. He has a web site at
http://www.lysator.liu.se/ unicorn/mcdonald/.

****

I SHALL START MY STORY with my name. I am Tendeleo. I was born here, in
Gichichi. Does that surprise you? The village has changed so much that no one born
then could recognize it now, but the name is still the same. That is why names are
important. They remain.

I was born in 1995, shortly after the evening meal and before dusk. That is what
Tendeleo means in my language, Kalenjin: early-evening-shortly-after-dinner. I am the
oldest daughter of the pastor of St. John's Church. My younger sister was born in
1998, after my mother had two miscarriages, and my father asked the congregation
to lay hands on her. We called her Little Egg. That is all there are of us, two. My
father felt that a pastor should be an example to his people, and at that time the
government was calling for smaller families.

My father had cure of five churches. He visited them on a red scrambler bike the
bishop at Nakuru had given him. It was good motorbike, a Yamaha. Japanese. My
father loved riding it. He practised skids and jumps on the back roads because he
thought a clergyman should not be seen stunt-riding. Of course, people did, but they
never said to him. My father built St. John's. Before him, people sat on benches
under trees. The church he made was sturdy and rendered in white concrete. The
roof was red tin, trumpet vine climbed over it. In the season flowers would hang
down outside the window. It was like being inside a garden. When I hear the story of
Adam and Eve, that is how I think of Eden, a place among the flowers. Inside there