The Red Moon
A Novel
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
“The moon was red on the night my mother died. Fat, fairly bursting, as I remember, it rode so low in the sky that it grazed the backs of the leopards who hissed and spat and cursed it for interrupting the hunt. It caressed the thorny tips of the acacia trees, bending them, seeming to crush them with light.”
In The Red Moon, newcomer Kuwana Haulsey has crafted a strikingly beautiful coming-of-age story set amid the turbulent history of modern Kenya.
The novel centers on Nasarian, the daughter of a successful Samburu herdsman and his Somali fourth wife. On the verge of adulthood, Nasarian finds herself trapped between the demands of her traditional tribal life and her desire to live abroad as a writer. When her parents die suddenly, Nasarian's plan to escape her sheltered world is undermined by her scornful brother Lolorok. Disgusted by Nasarian's refusal to be circumcised and thus initiated into the traditional role of wife and mother, Lolorok allows his sister to be inherited by a distant cousin.
Nasarian is convinced that no matter how hard she fights, she will never be allowed to call her life her own. She is dogged by the memory of her father, who was caught in the midst of a brutal war, branded with the name Mau Mau, imprisoned as a terrorist. She is haunted by the spirit of her mother, captured in a bloody raid and destined, like Nasarian, to be an outcast.
Nasarian runs away, sparking a sweeping journey of discovery that evokes fifty years and three generations of her family history. Weaving ancient myth and folklore into the tapestry of Nasarian's personal quest, The Red Moon chronicles the yearning of a brave young woman while simultaneously depicting a nation's equally fierce search for a truthful and lasting spiritual independence.
Stunning in its revelations, The Red Moon portrays incisively a way of life rarely glimpsed by those who have not experienced its richness and survived its terror. With an intensity rare in modern fiction, The Red Moon takes readers into the heart of an incredibly courageous young woman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First-time novelist Haulsey explores the complex subject of female circumcision in this harrowing, bleakly beautiful tale of the ultra-traditional Samburu tribe of Kenya. Nineteen-year-old Nasarian is an outsider many times over: not just the "half-breed" daughter of a Somali mother and a Samburu father, but also a book-smart student who has (so far) successfully resisted her elders' efforts to circumcise her for marriage. When both her parents die, she is left defenseless, in the "care" of her cousin Lalasi, and given the job of tending to his young daughter, Nasieku, who is neglected by a battered, drunken mother. Despite the apparently lenient terms of the arrangement, Nasarian flees to the forest, where, in the company of two elderly elephant mothers, she meditates at length on the brutal, death-scarred lives of her parents, who eventually found solace in the traditions of Samburu ancestors. But for Nasarian, embracing tradition is impossible especially after she has to watch helplessly as Lalasi orders nine-year-old Nasieku to be circumcised in a procedure that soon kills her. Writing in a stark but delicate style that seems to mimic the terrain, Haulsey unsparingly depicts the miseries of East African tribal life: routine domestic violence, alcoholism and disease, as well as the complications of polygamy and ritual circumcision. But there are no snap judgments here, as Nasarian's tortured ambivalence gives the novel subtlety and depth. If the ending seems pat Nasarian enrolls in Columbia University's creative writing program, selling her poems and stories "for a rather reasonable price" the powerful thrust of the rest of this unflinching tale marks Haulsey as a promising young writer.
