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Sex, Race, and Politics are all at the heart of this extraordinary account of the short life and violent death of Hakim Jamal. A black American radical who was born Alan Donaldson in a Boston ghetto and reborn in prison as a follower of Malcolm X, Hakim took the movie star Jean Seberg as lover, wrote and published the story of his life, and finally came to believe that he was God.
Diana Athill, a well known British editor, liked the man in Hakim, and saw the book in his life. She became his friend, briefly his lover, and then watched with dismay as he slowly destroyed his prospects, alienated his friends, and exploited his young English girlfriend, Gail Benson, the daughter of a Member of Parliament.
Benson changed her name to Hale Kimga to please Hakim and followed him to Trinidad, where she was brutally murdered in 1972. The crime caused a sensation at the time and was later incorporated by V.S. Naipual in his novel, Guerrillas. Hakim himself was shot to death in Boston a few years later, and not long afterward Jean Seberg killed herself in Paris.
But from this sad cautionary tale it is the voice of Diana Athill that the reader may best remember - cool, direct, vivid, honest, unblinking. There are no false words or emotions here, simply the spare and moving narrative of a man who found and lost himself in the span of a few years. Athill is English, but she has written one of the enduring accounts of the burdens of race in America.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Biography, Friends and associates, Women editors, African Americans, Death and burial, Motion picture actors and actresses, Vermont, biography, Seberg, jean, 1938-1979, Editors, Women, great britain, Women, biography, African americans, biography, Motion picture actors and actresses, united statesPlaces
Great Britain, United StatesShowing 8 featured editions. View all 8 editions?
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Make Believe: A True Story
April 1, 2005, Granta Books
Paperback
in English
- New Ed edition
1862077088 9781862077089
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Make believe: a true story
2003, Granta Books
in English
- New ed. / with a new introduction by Patrick French.
1862077088 9781862077089
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Make Believe: A True Story
March 1994, Steerforth Press
Hardcover
in English
- 1 Amer ed edition
1883642213 9781883642211
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Make believe: a true story
1993, Steerforth Press
in English
- 1st American ed.
1883642213 9781883642211
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Work Description
In Make Believe, Diana Athill, acclaimed author of Instead of a Letter and Stet, remembers her turbulent friendship with Hakim Jamal, a young black convert to the teachings of Malcolm X, whom she met in London in the late 1960s.
Despite a desperately troubled youth, he became an eloquent spokesman for the black underclass, was Jean Seberg's lover and published a book about Malcolm X, before descending into a mania that had him believing he was God. A witness to his struggles, Diana Athill writes with her characteristic honesty about her entanglement with Jamal, Jamal's relationship with the daughter of a British MP, Gail Benson, and Jamal's, and separately Gail's, eventual murders.
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Feedback?October 12, 2023 | Edited by OnFrATa | Merge works (MRID: 87277) |
October 12, 2023 | Edited by kathrinpassig | fixed work title, added translator, language |
April 28, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the work. |
April 16, 2010 | Edited by WorkBot | update details |
December 10, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |