AFRICAN NOVEL CHALLENGE OCTOBER 2023 : NGUGI WA THIONG'O & SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA

NGUGI WA THIONG'O is often cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature (incidentally announced this month) and is clearly one of Africa's most influential writers.

SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA's upbringing in Rwanda has coloured her work vividly.

I plan to read :

The Perfect Nine by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
and
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, translated by the author, illustrated by Sunandini Banerjee

A picture book about how humans began to walk on two legs and how their bodies work in harmony. It's a nifty fable and Banerjee's cutout illustrations worked well with the story.

The story, sans pictures, can be read at https://news.uci.edu/magazines/articles/the-upright-revolution-or-why-humans-wal...

>4 amanda4242: A great start as always by you, Amanda. x

I read A Grain of Wheat as my East African novel so I am giving Notre-Dame du Nil a go. As part of this “challenge” I have read several novels set at the time of independence from colonial rule and perhaps inevitably they have a certain sameness.

>6 booksaplenty1949: Certainly I would agree thematically, but there is a great disparity in quality don't you think?

>6 booksaplenty1949:. I also read Grain of Wheat earlier this year, and so will try Our Lady of the Nile. Seeing the title in French gives it more impact!

>7 PaulCranswick: Yes. Achebe’s consistently superior. No Easy Task no easy read. A Grain of Wheat tried to put the issue in a larger philosophical/psychological perspective—-not entirely successfully, IMHO. General take for all of them is “Meet the new boss—same as the old boss.” Disheartening.

our lady of the nile and upright revolution both look interesting

>6 booksaplenty1949: I agree with you about the sameness, but given they all suffered through the same invasion, it stands to reason. but the best I have read have ways of being different enough to enjoy. Esp true of the 3 books I read in Aug about women dealing with polygamy. Ill give these a try

I'm halfway through Our Lady of the Nile and filled with dread for the fate of the protagonist, although I'm not sure that's the emotion the author was hoping to instill.

I finished Our Lady of the Nile and was a bit disappointed by the writing. It feels like the debut novel it is, albeit by an important female Rwandan author whose lived experience informs the book. I didn't find the writing inspired. What have been others' impressions?

>12 labfs39:. I am not very far in, and having a similar reaction. I will probably finish it, but maybe not?

Regarding Ngugi Wa Thiongo; I think that his later books might be better (more distinctive). I read Wizard of the Crow a few years ago, and really loved it.

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

Rwanda is proof, if proof were needed, that racism isn't just something invented by the white man.

Just as Protestants and Catholics have killed each other for centuries;
Just as Sunni and Shia have been in bloody conflict since the passing of the Prophet;
Just as the Yezidi has been hunted down and slaughtered in the Middle East;
the Hutu and the Tutsi have long lived in fear and hatred of each other. In Rwanda the Hutu were in the majority and the few Tutsi girls in the Mountain Convent School "Our Lady of the Nile" are not safe from that majority.

Mukasonga, in this her first novel, does a good job is ratcheting up the doom laden throughout the book to its sad conclusion.

I do agree with Lisa and Rhonda that there are clear signs that this is an author still finding her feet, so to speak. I thought the sense of dread was palpable and the casual spitefulness that escalated believable and that was very much to Mukasonga's credit. I did prefer The Barefoot Woman, largely about the killing of her mother and other members of her family but I don't quite agree that the writing here is uninspired.

>12 labfs39: I am about halfway through and am finding it short on plot. The late-night assignation with the coffee planter obsessed with Tutsis, or at least Tutsi women, seemed a very contrived way of working in European racial fantasies on the subject. As a “school story” it is full of sharp observations, however, and I agree that suspense is building although I will wait to see if I feel that it has been created independent of my knowledge of the outcome of the Hutu/Tutsi divide.

Finally finished Notre Dame du Nil. I remained impressed with Mukasonga’s plan to use the conventions of the “school story”—-cliques, eccentric teachers, sneaking out at night—-in a dark, adult novel about colonial exploitation and genocide. Not sure her writing skill was up to doing her idea full justice, however. Although the novel was written almost twenty years after the Rwandan genocide the author declines to look beyond the events to later consequences, which while a valid artistic choice does leave the novel closing on a personal and indecisive note.

I also finished Our Lady of the Nile, and ended up liking it quite well. I don't think I've read any other novels from Rwanda, and glad that I rectified that.

nov thread pls

Just posted it, Cindy, in Announcements and on my thread:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/354901

Here it is!