Abyssinian Chronicles
A Novel
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Every once in a while there emerges a literary voice with the power and urgency to immerse readers deep within a previously "invisible" culture. From a young African writer who has already earned comparisons to Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes this masterful saga of life in 20th-century Uganda.
The teller of this panoramic tale is Mugezi, a quick-witted, sharp-eyed man whose life encompasses the traditional and the modern, the peaceful and the insanely violent, the despotic and the democratic. Born in a rural community in the early 1960s, he is raised by his grandfather, a deposed clan chief, and his great-aunt, or "grandmother," after his parents immigrate to the capital city of Kampala. At age nine, he leaves behind his secure life in the village to join his parents and siblings in the city, where he is first exposed to the despotism and hardship that he will contend with in the years to come.
The nightmare reign of Idi Amin and its chaotic aftermath are the backdrop to Mugezi's troubled coming-of-age: his constant struggle with his harsh mother and austere father; his years spent as caregiver to his parents' ever-growing brood of children; his sojourn in a horrifically repressive Catholic seminary. He goes to work as a high school teacher, becomes enmeshed in a tragic romance, finds himself drawn into a dubious, potentially dangerous alliance with the military after Amin's fall and witnesses the widespread ravages of the AIDS virus. Finally, sickened by personal loss and national tragedy, he manages to immigrate to Amsterdam.
The details of Mugezi's life provide a foundation for Isegawa's brilliant and profoundly illuminating portrait of the contemporary, postcolonial African experience. Filled with extraordinary characters, animated by a wicked sense of humor and guided by an intense yet clear-eyed compassion, Abyssianian Chronicles is our introduction to a superlative new writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Abyssinia may have become present-day Ethiopia, but the title of Isegawa's debut actually refers to Uganda--a "land of false bottoms where under every abyss there was another one waiting to ensnare people." Set in the postcolonial 1970s and '80s, when power struggles are the order of the day, the book is a bildungsroman following the life of narrator Mugezi Muwaabi, as he plots his own independence from tyrannical rulers (his parents) and capitalizes on his considerable natural resources of charm and intelligence. Isegawa clearly means for Mugezi's story to parallel Uganda's, so he devotes much of the book to an almost journalistic account of national politics--General Idi Amin's rise to power, and his subsequent ouster at the hands of deposed president Milton Obote. But apart from the intended echoes, these passages have little direct bearing on Mugezi's life, and sap the narrative of momentum and vitality. The novel is strongest when it concentrates on Mugezi's antics: he torments his mother by stealing the bobbin from her sewing machine, and breaks the will of one strict priest by smearing excrement on his treasured car. These and other scenes create a coming-of-age story that traces the shifting balance of power in any relationship. Isegawa's language is overheated at times, but it also yields gems, as when Mugezi's grandfather asks for a shave: "The razor crackled and filled with stubble as I dragged it across valleys and ridges. Birds chirped fussily in the tallest gray-skinned mtuba trees. They jumped up and down on one branch." Such keen observations go further toward depicting Uganda than the dry history lessons, but luckily there are many gorgeous passages throughout to offset the distancing effect of Isegawa's sometimes overextended reach. FYI: A Ugandan native, Isegawa is now a Dutch citizen living in Amsterdam. This book was originally published in the Netherlands in 1998.
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