SOURCE: "Terrors of Civilisation," in Books and Bookmen, No. 369, July, 1986, p. 36.

Wandor is an English playwright, scriptwriter, short story writer, poet, novelist, editor, and nonfiction writer who frequently writes on feminist themes. In the review below, she presents a thematic discussion of Incidents at the Shrine.

A series of oppositions form the themes underlying this collection of short stories [entitled Incidents at the Shrine]: black/white; civilisation/superstition; survival/destruction. The war between indigenous African culture and white civilisation is laid out in the first story, 'Laughter Beneath the Bridge', where a group of children are left behind, abandoned after an unnamed civil war in an unnamed African country. Violence comes from all sides, and is there in the threatening presence of the ordinary and everyday, as the young boy hero finally survives, but not before having seen violence done to others.

A young boy is also the...