English, 
French, Bilingual,
A lively first novel from Uganda - Abyssinian Chronicles, Moses Isegawa's sprawlingly ambitious first novel, is set amid
the carnage and chaos of post-independence Uganda. Its title has nothing to do with ancient
Ethiopia, but puns on a country that was "a land of false bottoms where under every abyss there was
another one". First published two years ago in the Netherlands, where Isegawa lives, the novel was
hailed as a Ugandan The Tin Drum or Midnight's Children. Gªnter Grass and Salman Rushdie are
indeed spectral presences. Yet it has African precedents, too, in perhaps more assured novels of the
past 15 years that meld history with myth and metaphor, entwining personal fates with those of
nations and communities - from Nuruddin Farah's Maps (1986) and Kojo Laing's Search Sweet
Country (1986) to Moyez Vassanji's The Gunny Sack (1989) and Ben Okri's The Famished Road
(1991).
Nor does Abyssinian Chronicles rely on the "magical realism" of Rushdie and Gabriel Garc?a
Ms
Mugezi's watchful, sly intelligence and acerbic, sometimes lacerating tone dominate the novel, in
which his coming of age keeps pace with the country's. Born in 1960, with independence, he
witnesses the 1966 state of emergency, the rise and fall of Idi Amin and the ousting of the returned
dictator Milton Obote in 1986 after renewed civil war. This freewheeling history is grounded in the
lives of Mugezi's family - united only when watching Muhammad Ali fights - in coffee-growing
swampland festering with illicit passions and religious rivalries. It reaches back to the sectarian
battles of the 1950s, as Protestantism and Catholicism vie with Islam and traditional beliefs. Top of Form | African Literature
Index | African Writers Index | E-mail us! "When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population." So a political commissar in the Rwanda Patriotic Front reflected after the 1994 massacre of as many as one million Tutsis in Rwanda. Underlying his statement is the realization that, though ordered by a minority of state functionaries, the slaughter was performed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, including even judges, human rights activists, and doctors, nurses, priests, friends, and spouses of the victims. Indeed, it is its very popularity that makes the Rwandan genocide so unthinkable. This book makes it thinkable. Rejecting easy explanations of the genocide as a mysterious evil force that was bizarrely unleashed, one of Africa's best-known intellectuals situates the tragedy in its proper context. He coaxes to the surface the historical, geographical, and no political forces that made it possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors. He finds answers in the nature of political identities generated during colonialism, in the failures of the nationalist revolution to transcend these identities, and in regional demographic and political currents that reach well beyond Rwanda. In so doing, Mahmood Mamdani usefully broadens understandings of citizenship and political identity in postcolonial Africa. There have been few attempts to explain the Rwandan horror, and none has succeeded so well as this one. Mamdani's analysis provides a solid foundation for future studies of the massacre. Even more important, his answers point a way out of crisis: a direction for reforming political identity in central Africa and preventing future tragedies. Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of: He is currently President of the Dakar-based Council for Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA).
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Okot p'Bitek was born in Gulu, the largest town in Acholi town in Uganda in 1931. He
began writing at an early age. Okot played for the Ugandan national soccer team, and in
1958, he remained in England after a soccer tour to continue his education. He received a
certificate in education from Bristol University, and earned a law degree from University
College of Wales at Aberystwyth. In the early 1960's he studied social anthropology at
Oxford, and received a B.Litt. He returned to Uganda to teach at Makerere University in
Kampala. In 1967, he went to teach at Nairobi University. He died of a liver infection in
1982. In 1953, he wrote his first novel, Lak Tar (White Teeth). It is the story of a young
Acholi man who must work away from home to earn money for bridewealth, so that he may
marry. After working in Kampala and on a sugar plantation, he returns home with only a
small portion of the necessary sum. On his return trip, he is pick pocketed, and returns
to Gulu with nothing. In 1969, Song of Lawino was published. It is written in the style of a traditional
Acholi song. It is an Acholi wife's lament about her college-educated husband, who has
rejected Acholi traditions and ideas for Western ones. Much of Lawino's anger is directed
at her husband's lover who embodies these Western values and customs, and who she
contrasts with herself. In Song of Ocal, her husband responds to her, decrying what he
perceives as Africa's backwardness, and extoling the virtues of European society and
ideas. Lawino and Ocal's debate reflects the discourse taking place at the time in African
societies about the implications of adopting Western culture and ideals. Other works,
including Song of A Prisoner (1971) and Song of Malaya (1971) are written in the same
poetic style. Okot p'Bitek has been criticized by other African writers, including Ngugi wa Thiong'o,
for not adequately addressing the underlying causes of Africa's problems. Okot, however,
believed that his work, like all good African literature, dealt honestly with the human
condition and had "deep human roots." (KJ) Lak Tar. Nairobi, Kenya: East African Literature Bureau, 1953. Top of Form | African Literature
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Suggest a site, contribute to the Index: africanwriters@yahoo.co.uk
This page has had,
Moses Isegawa
Abyssinian Chronicles
Mahmood MAMDANI When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda
Okot p'Bitek(1931-1982)
The Writings of Okot p'Bitek
Song of Lawino. Nairobi, Kenya: East African Publishing House, 1969.
Song of Ocal. Nairobi, Kenya: East African Publishing House, 1970.
Two Songs: Song of a Prisoner, Song of Malaya. Nairobi, Kenya: East African
Publishing House, 1971.
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