Abyssinian Chronicles

Description

Set in a tribal village during the years of the Idi Amin terror in Uganda, Abyssinian Chronicles takes us into the heart of Africa, vividly immersing us in the mesmerising extremes of beauty and brutality, wisdom and ignorance, wealth and poverty, hope and despair that define the continent today.

We come to intimately know an extended family rich in centuries-old tradition, caught between a past of non-rational ritual and mysticism, a present fraught with chaos and danger and a future that will have little place for their old way of life. And we follow the unsentimental education of the boy who sits in the tree and takes it all in, who grows up to attend the good school in town, who learns, observes and teaches, and starts to feel the very earth moving under the African experience and the people he loves.

Filled with extraordinary characters, animated by a wicked sense of humour and guided by intense yet clear-eyed compassion, Abyssinian Chronicles feels at once classic and completely unique. While echoing the epic narrative sweep and profound moral insight of the great masterworks, it is also radically unlike any other novel we have ever read: a book from inside the African soul, in which Western civilisation is the “other”, where we are the strangers in a strange land who cannot emerge unchanged.

Author Information

Moses Isegawa is a 35 year-old resident of Holland who emigrated from his native Uganda in 1990. He grew up in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. He studied at a catholic seminary and taught history in a secondary school. He now has Dutch nationality and lives in a small town near Amsterdam.