SUNRISE TOMORROW: A Story of Botswana

by Naomi Mitchison ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 1973

Essentially plotless glimpses of the problems and aspirations of a group of Botswana youth, torn between the desire to be modern and the need to find things African that they can still accept. Seloi, who becomes a nurse and, in the end is able to accept help from a traditional African doctor in an emergency, and a shy boy named Mokgosi, who leaves a superstitious family to learn economics, are the principal characters, but their less scholarly friends -- often bored and dissatisfied with village poverty but less able to find useful ways to channel their energies -- are perhaps more typical and less familiar to American readers. Mitchison, a Scot resident in Botswana, seems to have caught the idiom of the older generation -- especially their love for cattle which dominates their minds and metaphors -- and the dilemmas of the younger (Seloi is at first proud of her European-style nurse's cap and insists that Mokgosi wear socks to visit her at the hospital, yet later begins to wonder whether such clothing is suitable to Africa). The story provides the framework for quiet, unobtrusive insights, though in the absence of any dramatic tempo one must be content with satisfying incidentals.

Pub Date: March 15, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1973

Categories: FICTION