Abyssinian Chronicles

by Moses Isegawa

Like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude , Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles tells a riveting story of twentieth-century Africa that is passionate in vision and breathtaking in scope.

At the center of this unforgettable tale is Mugezi, a young man who manages to make it through the hellish reign of Idi Amin and experiences firsthand the most crushing aspects of Ugandan he withstands his distant father's oppression and his mother's cruelty in the name of Catholic zeal, endures the ravages of war, rape, poverty, and AIDS, and yet he is able to keep a hopeful and even occasionally amusing outlook on life. Mugezi's hard-won observations form a cri de coeur for a people shaped by untold losses.

Genres: Africa, Fiction, Uganda, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, African Literature, Literature

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Moses Isegawa, also known as Sey Wava (born 10 August 1963), is a Ugandan author. He has written novels set against the political turmoil of Uganda, which he left in 1990 for the Netherlands. His debut novel, Abyssinian Chronicles, was first published in Amsterdam in 1998, selling more than 100,000 copies and gaining him widespread national attention. It was also very well reviewed when published in English in the United Kingdom and United States, in 2001. Isegawa became a naturalized Dutch citizen, but he returned to live in Uganda in 2006.

Reviews

[Ronkeli]

Hieman epätasainen, mutta jotenkin mukaansatempaava kirja ugandalaisesta Mugezista ja hänen suvustaan. Välillä minäkertoja on äänessä ja välillä tapahtumia seurataan muiden henkilöiden silmin. Ugandan levottomat olot ja joka puolella kohdattu väkivalta ovat melko synkkä tausta, eikä päähenkilö ei ole mikään pyhimys, vaan selviytyjä, jonka on turvauduttava monenlaisiin arveluttaviin keinoihin selvitäkseen.