Leni Zumas's writing crackles. Her books are sharp, bleak, funny, and possibly dangerous. When her collection of short stories, Farewell Navigator,...
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Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o uses a distinction in setting between two mountain ridges in which in between there is a river(river honia) as an organizing conceit that dramatizes the antagonism between two competing native constituencies and their seemingly irreconcilable belief structures plus totally different ways of life. But its the same river that the writer uses to ensure that the two parties at last come into good terms and appreciate one another.Because the setting (presumably the late 1940's or early 1950's) precedes emergence of substantive attempts at decolonization, Ngugi's novel portrays not so much the conflict between "colonizer" and "colonized" but the internal conflicts between these two communities who share the same river despite of their differences. The novel's opening situates the narrative's broader conflicts within a Kenyan landscape that has yet to experience the effects of British colonialism.
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The River Between by Ngugi Wa Thiongo
kphilip88, November 18, 2007
Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o uses a distinction in setting between two mountain ridges in which in between there is a river(river honia) as an organizing conceit that dramatizes the antagonism between two competing native constituencies and their seemingly irreconcilable belief structures plus totally different ways of life. But its the same river that the writer uses to ensure that the two parties at last come into good terms and appreciate one another.Because the setting (presumably the late 1940's or early 1950's) precedes emergence of substantive attempts at decolonization, Ngugi's novel portrays not so much the conflict between "colonizer" and "colonized" but the internal conflicts between these two communities who share the same river despite of their differences. The novel's opening situates the narrative's broader conflicts within a Kenyan landscape that has yet to experience the effects of British colonialism.(7 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)