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AFRICAN AFFAIRS

Huketi mahali tuli Tabu ilonikabli Moliwa nipa sahali Nalaumu moyo wangu I sit in a quiet place The trouble that confronts me My God, give me easement I blame my heart

hawaza matcso yangu nalilia moyo wangu Kitue kOio changu Kupenda usipotakwa and think of my sufferings and I weep for my heart for my crying to cease if it is not wanted for loving.

While there are' some signs of the impatience and self-adulation of immaturity, in general one can only marvel at Ahmed Bhalo's capacity for selfanalysis and wide scope of subject in one so young. In many places the poems convey the impression that Ahmed would like to leave the cage in which he is confined and soar high. Those who know Kuze, where he lives, will not be surprised. His is a wail of anguish, but he realizes nevertheless that he must be resigned to the will of fate.
Wisconsin ALI AHMED JAIIADMY

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A Grain of Wheat, by James Ngugi Heinemann, 1967. 280pp. 25s. There is a moment in James Ngugi's new novel where two ex-detainees are talking bitterly on the eve of independence in Kenya. Gikonyo die rising businessman says to Mugo die village solitary : It is people like you who ought to have been die first to taste the fruits of independence. But now, whom do we see riding in long cars and changing diem daily as if motor cars were clothes ? It is those who did not take part in the movement, die same who ran to die shelter of schools and universities and administration. At political meetings you hear diem shout: Uhuru, Uhuru, we fought for. Fought where ? They were mere uncircumdsed boys. They knew suffering as a word . . . The historical irony to which diese words direct our attention is not central to Ngugi's concern ; we are aware of it as something diat is happening alongside die novel's main action, in die larger world where die fruits of national power are fought for and won. Ngugi's central group of characters belongs to die generation diat was just grown up in 19S2. In die flurry of reassessment that precedes independence in December 1963, the only safe figure among diem is die dead resistance leader Kihika, hanged by die British eight years earlier at die height of die Rebellion. Kihika made no compromises, public or secret, widi an enemy he could still see as single and vulnerable. His friends and contemporaries include Gikonyo, a veteran of die camps who ' confessed' in order to return to Mumbi, a wife who had meanwhile born another man's child ; Karanja, a collaborator doing well out of the Emergency, who is die father of Mumbi's child; and Mugo, who has acquired a reputation for courage and endurance as a so-called ' hard-core' detainee.

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But these superficial facts are all misleading. Mugo is in fact a traitor, the betrayer of Kihika to the British, and a psychological cripple. Mumbi really. loves Gikonoyo and is waiting to resume life with him when he awakes from his sullen stupor of resentment Karanja's moment of success is over with the departure of his white masters ; he is a lonely, frightened man anxious only to survive. Even the forest fighters, General R and Lieutenant Koinandu, have elements in their pasts that they are eager to suppress by pursuing a singleminded vengeance on Kihika's betrayer. By weaving this plot to and fro between the events of the 1950s and 1963, and between the lives of his characters, Ngugi manages to bring all these factors to a climax in the events of Independance Day itself, when all these men race each other on the local playing-field at Rung'eL But the very marginality of the event away from the real seat of power in Nairobi and neglected by all the new leaders, emphasizes its essential irrelevance. Thus all the sufferings of the Emergency are like a grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies. And, in die words of I. Corinthians which precede Ngugi's story: that which thou sowest, them sowest not that body that shall be. . . . With this novel Ngugi has brought up to date the preoccupations which dominated his first two works, The River Between and Weep Not, Child, and has subjected them, implicitly, to the judgement of the present. This is much, but the new book still leaves the reader with a sense of disappointment. Ngugi is not an eloquent writer: his dialogue does not work closely, nor does his writing generally exhibit any interest of texture. In these respects he compares badly with that great chronicler of African village life, Chinua Achebe. Ngugi has no real interest in physical presence of appearance, the telling detail, phrase or gesture which bring the living, speaking man before us. And once again, the intended simplicity of his ending has led him into banality. This inability to end his novels effectively is related to his weakness for symbolism is diffuse and uncontrolled (Gikonoyo's stool in this novel is a notable example), and he would be wise to eschew it in favour of a style at once more realistic and more sensitive to the richness of life. University of Sussex
GERALD MOORE

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