STATE OF EMERGENCY

According to the publishers this is ""the definitive account"" of the Mau Mau rebellion; perhaps that is too much to claim for it, but certainly it is a readable and interesting book which should be a great help to any reader who wants to gain some perspective on the maze of conflicting eye-witness reports of this very involved and still very mysterious occurrence. Not that Mr. Majdalany is completely objective, but he does try to be as disinterested as a British subject can be, and he seldom hesitates to lay the blame wherever he feels it belongs. He begins with descriptions of Kenya, the Kikuyu tribe, the white settlers, and that ""sinister dominating figure"" Jomo Kenyatta, before proceeding to unroll the story of ""A Kind of a War' which resulted in the deaths of ""nearly 2,000 loyal Africans and over 0,000 Mau Mau"" and (""perhaps the most surprising statistic of all"") only 32 European civilians. That story is as bizarre and gruesome as any to come out of current events, and no one who reads State of Emergency is likely to soon forget it.