THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE
Masha Hamilton
HarperCollins
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0061173487
ISBN-13: 9780061173486

• Critical Praise
• Read a Review
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview -- April 6, 2007

When Fiona Sweeney tells her family she wants to do something that matters, they do not expect her to go to Africa to help start a traveling library. But that is where Fiona chooses to make her mark: in the arid bush of northeastern Kenya, among tiny, far-flung communities, nearly unknown and lacking roads and schools, where people live daily with drought, hunger, and disease.

In THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE Fi travels to settlements where people have never held a book in their hands. Her goal is to help bring Dr. Seuss, Homer, Tom Sawyer, and Hemingway to a largely illiterate and semi-nomadic populace. However, because the donated books are limited in number and the settlements are many, the library initiates a tough fine: if anyone fails to return a book, the bookmobile will stop coming.

Though her motives are good, Fi doesn't understand the people she seeks to help. Encumbered by her Western values, she finds herself in the midst of several struggles within the community of Mididima. There the bookmobile's presence sparks a feud between those who favor modernization and those who fear the loss of the traditional way of life in the African bush. The feud heightens when one young man --- "Scar Boy" ---- doesn't return his books. As promised, the library stops all visits, but Fi goes to the settlement alone, determined to recover what has been lost.

Evocative, seamless, and haunting, THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE is a powerful saga that challenges our fears of the unknown. It is a story that captures the riddles and calamities that often occur when two cultures collide. It follows an American librarian who travels to Africa to give meaning to her life, and ultimately loses a piece of her heart. In the end, this compelling novel shows how one life can change many, in spite of dangerous and seemingly immutable obstacles.

THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE © Copyright 2008 by Masha Hamilton. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

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Critical Praise

"Thirty-something Fiona Sweeney wants to make a difference in the world. So she takes a cue from Angelina and heads to Africa to work for a relief organization that brings books on camels to the poorest villages. But some view books and knowledge, not to mention Fiona’s Western ways, as a threat. Soon she learns that good deeds are not always rewarded. Inspired by real events, this captivating story about a determined chick with a big heart will touch you deeply."

--- Cosmo Magazine

"The Kenyans, whom Hamilton imagines with greater skill and subtlety as the crisis worsens, emerge as the story’s most captivating characters."

--- Entertainment Weekly

"Masha Hamilton’s compelling third novel, THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE, leaves no room for doubt: Books are essential. Cookbooks, novels, parenting books—they all matter to Fiona “Fi” Sweeney, a librarian from Brooklyn searching for fulfillment atop a bookladen camel in the arid and dangerous bush of Kenya. Tiny, far-flung villages populated by nomadic tribes, largely forgotten and neglected by the greater population of a more modern Africa, welcome the bookmobile and Fi with a combination of curiosity and wary distrust of Westerners’ belief that the rest of the world needs guidance."

--- BookPage

"New York City librarian Fiona Sweeney has taken an unusual assignment in Kenya—running a bookmobile service powered by camel and serving isolated, seminomadic villages like Mididima, where teenaged library customer Kanika lives with her grandmother, Neema. Taban, a young man severely scarred as a toddler by a hyena, is shunned by most of the community, but he and Kanika share a friendship and a sweet anticipation of Sweeney’s every visit."

--- Booklist, STARRED

"Yes, there really is such a thing as a camel bookmobile, and the image of unwieldy beasts laden with book-filled boxes provided inspiration for novelist Hamilton to compose a lush celebration of the productive—and destructive—power of the written word. Languishing in a dead-end job in a Brooklyn library, Fiona Sweeney, 36, feels time is passing her by. So when the opportunity arises to travel to Africa to manage an unorthodox mobile library, Fi jumps at the chance to influence a culture of nomadic people whose existence is dependent upon more basic human requirements, such as water, food, and shelter."

--- Library Journal, STARRED

"Hamilton’s captivating third novel (after 2004’s The Distance Between Us) follows Fiona Sweeney, a 36-year-old librarian, from New York to Garissa, Kenya … Hamilton weaves memorable characters and elemental emotions in artful prose with the lofty theme of Western-imposed “education” versus a village’s perceived perils of exposure to the developed world."

--- Publishers Weekly

"Masha Hamilton’s magical new novel transported me across the globe, teaching me about faith, ambition, and the surprise of love. Fi is a character to fall for and cheer for. Her interactions with the people of Mididima are spellbinding and broke my heart."

--- Amanda Eyre Ward

"I’ve always known that books can change lives. Masha Hamilton has opened my eyes to how books can also change entire communities, and not always in the ways one might expect. The Bookmobile is a brave and astonishing novel; it transported me to a world I hadn’t known, and my life is all the richer for it."

--- Gayle Brandeis

"In this vivid, absorbing novel Masha Hamilton transports her readers, even more surely than the camels do books, to the village of Mididima and the struggle between traditional values and western education. Richly peopled, full of conflicts and surprises, The Camel Bookmobile made me think and feel in all the best ways. My only regret was that the book had to end."

--- Margot Livesey

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