Abyssinian Chronicles : A Novel - Softcover

In his hugely impressive Abyssinian Chronicles Moses Isegawa renders the chaotic swirl of life in Uganda, from a lazy, remote village to the urban rush of Kampala. Containing within its 460 pages weddings, funerals, infidelities, public struggles with corrupt dictatorships (a section called "Amin, the Godfather"), and private struggles with God ("Seminary Years"), this is a first novel of epic ambitions. Narrated by Mugezi, the son of a man named Serenity and a woman named Padlock, Isegawa's book is wild and decentered, moving swiftly and confidently from place to place, from character to character. It is the kind of book that says, just follow, trust me, all these names and passions will sort themselves out and make sense sooner or later.

The prose itself bristles and cooks, with graceful transitions ("This time a year passed without hearing any news from Tiida") and scenes lurching with activity. Isegawa, who was born in Uganda but now lives in the Netherlands, is a master of unexpected verbs and details. Here Mugezi describes his mother's voice:

This woman knew how to irritate me on all fronts: her pathetic country-western girlie whine, xeroxed from a white nun from her convent days, the same nun from whom she had inherited the little tremolos which she sprinkled piously on the last hymn every night, really got to me.

Inconsistencies in the narrator's point of view can mar this novel and arrest its progress. The narrator will suddenly describe interior states he couldn't possibly know about: his mother's depression and loneliness, which she hides from everyone, the deepest thoughts of distant relatives. But for readers hoping to glimpse a foreign world, these bumps in the road are worth the ride. --Ellen Williams

"As Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children was for modern India, Abyssinian Chronicles will likely prove to be a breakthrough book for Uganda."
-- Time Out

"This briskly paced comic epic [is] an ironical bildungsroman that's also a full-scale portrayal of a traditional society in flux and in crisis . . . Overall, one of the most impressive works of fiction to have ever come out of Africa."
-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Isegawa's language...also yields gems....[K]een observations go further toward depicting Uganda than the dry history lessons."
--Publishers Weekly

"A ruthless book . . . extraordinary and important. Orchestrating many varied stories within the narrative, Isegawa forcefully propels the reader along."
-- Het Parool

"Epic, sprawling, brimming with life--and death, Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles blasts open the tidy borders of the conventional novel and redraws the literary map to reveal a whole new world . . . Eloquent, harrowing, and compulsively readable . . . Heavily populated with distinct, memorable characters, teeming with subplots, love affairs and vendettas, the novel begins in the African equivalent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo--equally exotic, equally under the spell of Catholicism and superstition, of romantic longings and sexual obsessions, of magical prophecy and gritty postcolonial reality . . . Isegawa's writing is so assured and seductive, his deployment of humor, incident, and detail so simultaneously freewheeling and controlled that we're deeply involved in the life of this family . . . By then, it's way to late to stop reading, and we can only hang on for the thrilling and nightmarish ride into, and out of, the whirlwind that swept through the far-away country that Moses Isegawa makes so vivid, so immediate--and so heartbreakingly real."
-- Francine Prose, Elle

"A great novel . . . a masterpiece!"
-- Haarlems Dagblad

"A picaresque novel enlarged to epic proportions . . . a flood of either colorful or vengeful stories of the stormy history of what the British used to call 'the pearl of Africa'."
-- De Morgen

"Isegawa's writing stems from the African tradition of colorful and exuberant storytelling. He captivates the reader with this truly magnificent book."
-- Algemeen Dagblad