A novel of hope and horror, in equal measure.
Set in the last tumultuous year of Idi Amin’s reign, this novel, the African author’s first to be published in the U.S., focuses on how the chaos of war affects a small Ugandan village.
The author’s microcosmic view of war allows her to concentrate on a small number of characters, primarily a family she develops across three generations. Kyomuhendo shrewdly chooses as her narrator Alinda, a 12-year-old girl whose vision is fresh and relatively innocent. She registers with both bewilderment and fear the events surrounding the villagers: Amin’s soldiers passing through the countryside in a riot of murder and rape; her father’s reckless courage in his willingness to protect his family against soldiers’ rifles with only a spear; her older brother Tendo’s withdrawal from family chores as he weighs the opportunity to join liberation forces; her best friend Jungu’s personal loyalty but eventual attraction to a young liberation soldier. Against this landscape of rapine and terror, the family must deal with the personal trials of family and village life. Alinda’s mother is about to give birth and no longer has the strength to hide out on the edge of the banana plantation to escape marauding soldiers, while Kaaka (“grandmother”) passes on some of her traditional wisdom but unwisely challenges some of Amin’s soldiers with her sharp tongue. The author’s matter-of-fact style is perfectly suited to Alinda’s naïve simplicity, in sharp counterpoint to the horrors on the edge of the narrative. The end brings a measure of guarded hope, as Alinda shares her joy: “the warm morning sun caressed our faces and bare arms. Blossoming trees lined the roadside, and the scents of yellow hibiscus and white violets filled the air.”
A novel of hope and horror, in equal measure.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-55861-539-7
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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