Bowie's Books by John O'Connell

Author:John O'Connell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526605788
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-09-23T09:55:59+00:00

After her death the dolphin, injured and bleeding, emerges from the water in an attempt to find its old friend, only to die itself.

But Camara and Shambowa’s idyll is all too brief. One morning Camara wakes to find Shambowa shaking with fever, her irises darting about under flickering eyelids. All attempts to save her fail. After her death the dolphin, injured and bleeding, emerges from the water in an attempt to find its old friend, only to die itself. Camara feels it would be wrong to throw its corpse back into the sea, so the villagers dig a fresh grave for the dolphin next to Shambowa’s and bury it there.

Bowie discusses A Grave for a Dolphin at length in the introduction he wrote for I Am Iman, the 2001 celebration of his wife’s life and work. He even reproduces the naked photo of ‘Shambowa’ – is it really her? – included in the original edition. Bowie says he first read the book in Berlin in 1977, finding it ‘magical and beautiful’. A few months later, in a weird coincidence, he was sent a script based on the story but decided to pass as he felt it wouldn’t translate successfully to film.

Years drifted by. Bowie met Iman and fell in love. And then one day in 1991, Iman received a script from her film agent. The role being offered her was that of a Somali girl, with Bowie pencilled in as the European who falls in love with her. Iman thought it a beautiful story, but not something that would work as a movie.

It turned out the screenplay was based on A Grave for a Dolphin. ‘Things like this happen to us all the time,’ Bowie notes, adding movingly that he’s glad his and Iman’s story hasn’t turned out like Camara and Shambowa’s: ‘We want to swim side by side for as long as we’ve been given, till one of us slips under the waves for the final time.’

Read it while listening to: ‘Heroes’

If you like this, try: Richard Wright, Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos

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