His book is also gaudy, sporadically brilliant,ĭisjointed and often tongue-tied by writing that alternates between an absorbingly straightforward account of Uganda's recent history and a lumpy porridge of ornate venting. Isegawa's own imagination is suitably dark (like Mugezi, his narrator, he left Uganda as a very young man and is now a Dutch citizen). Isegawa's theme, periodically and sometimes haphazardly inserted, is that the implants of colonialism, proselytizing religions, party politics, capitalism, militarism and international financial aid have distorted Uganda's authenticity and rendered

Mussolini in his empire-dreaming vainglory, called another African country: Ethiopia. For centuries this was what outsiders, including Rootless and bitter, Mugezi will flee finally to Europe from a country - its traditions destroyed and its modernity a corrupt failure - whose name he can no longer bear to use. Grandpa represents the traditional order, his son Serenity the chaos of transition, and Mugezi the despair of a younger generation over the dead end of transition and its own prospects. Grandfather, a father and his son are the three figures that form a tripod from which Moses Isegawa suspends his panoramic first novel about Uganda's

Michiko Kakutani Reviews 'Abyssinian Chronicles' (June 23, 2000).

A first novel by a Ugandan writer explores the legacy of colonialism through the fate of one extended family.

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa