Rettová, Alena

English

SOAS Research Online

refugees across the border, how was he able to hold meetings with North Koreanofficials in Pyongyang? Do North Koreans always distrust all foreigners, asthey are said to do here? The last is simply untrue, as those of us who meetNorth Korean scholars and diplomats abroad, and those of us who have walkedthe streets of Pyongyang, know only too well. Again, when one refugeetells Kim how she witnessed the public execution of a returnee, it reinforces anaccount – substantiated by secret film footage – that has been widely circulatedby journalists, but fails to prove the assertion made that such extreme punishmentis commonplace.None of this invalidates the personal stories, or the claims made by the author; Iwould, though, plead for a more closely argued exemplary ethnography focused onthe testimonies of its subjects. There is, still, much ethnography. We hear aboutwomen refugees who suffer when sold as brides for rural Chinese farmers (a prac-tice, incidentally, that involves many Chinese, not just Korean refugees, though thisis not discussed), or who are sold into city brothels. We hear of children born to sta-teless North Korean mothers in China, who as a consequence are unable to attendschool or obtain medical care. We hear that most refugees are sick when theycross the border. We gain insights into indoctrination and the mindset of NorthKoreans after six decades of socialist rule. We learn how refugees initially appearlifeless and rarely smile; that they are usually weak, thin, and malnourished; andso on. And it is here that the volume’s strength resides.Keith HowardAFR I CAELENA BERTONCINI ZÚBKOVÁ, MIKHAIL D. GROMOV, SAID A. M. KHAMIS andKYALLO WADI WAMITILA:Outline of Swahili Literature. Prose Fiction and Drama.(Second edition, extensively revised and enlarged.) xi, 500 pp. Leidenand Boston: Brill, 2009. E119. ISBN 978 90 04 16818 3.doi:10.1017/S0041977X09990280The first edition of Elena Bertoncini’s Outline of Swahili Literature (1989) was themain manual for generations of students of Swahili literature and a standard refer-ence work for scholars working on Swahili prose fiction and theatre. We have allthe reasons to assume that the second, updated edition of this major work, appearingexactly twenty years later, will enjoy the same recognition and popularity. The tur-bulent developments in Swahili prose fiction in the past twenty years make thispublication even more important.The second edition has been thoroughly revised and contains new sections. Thebook is divided into several large parts. Following the introduction, the main textis an account of the history of Swahili literature. It contains three chapters: prosefiction in pre-colonial and colonial times (pp. 11–43), contemporary prose fiction(pp. 45–170) and drama (pp. 171–234). Chapters 2 and 3 are subdivided intothree geographical areas: Kenya, the Tanzanian mainland and Zanzibar. Each ofthese six subsections includes two temporal divisions: from the 1960s to the1980s and from the 1990s to the present.594 R E V I E W SThe updated passages were written by Kyallo W. Wamitila (concentrating onKenya), Mikhail D. Gromov (Tanzanian mainland), and Said A. M. Khamis(Zanzibar); two of these literary critics (Wamitila and Khamis) are also prominentSwahili writers. Although the three new authors have each focused on onegeographical area, Gromov has also covered Wamitila’s writing (i.e. from Kenya)and two Zanzibari plays, and Khamis discusses Kezilahabi’s novels Nagona andMzingila (in the passage on the Tanzanian mainland). Gromov has additionallyco-authored with Bertoncini the expanded introductory chapter.Following the main text, the book contains two extensive appendixes which takeup over a half the total volume of the text (248 pages). Appendix 1 is a “List of con-temporary authors of novels, short stories and plays” (pp. 235–85) and Appendix 2 a“List of novels, short-story collections and plays” (pp. 287–482). It also contains aselected bibliography and an index.The book’s main merit is that it offers a reliable, almost exhaustive, andup-to-date factographical overview of Swahili prose fiction and drama. The twoappendixes are extremely helpful for quick reference. It is also the only availablework of this quality for Swahili prose fiction – and Swahili literature remains oneof the few literatures in African languages for which such a meticulous descriptionis available.The updates of the first edition are generally very good. In the section on recentKenyan prose, Wamitila hails “the coming of age of the Kenyan Swahili novel”(p. 54) – a statement attested by such outstanding authors as Katama Mkangi,with his sci-fi cum utopian novel Walenisi (1995), Ken Walibora, author of excel-lent novels, such as the latest Ndoto ya Almasi (2006), John Habwe, with Paradiso(2005), or Wamitila himself, author of both realistic and experimental novels, butalso promising budding writers such as Omar Babu, with his novelistic debut of2007, Kala Tufaha (included in the appendixes).The section on prose in Tanzania is equally exciting: Euphrase Kezilahabi’snovels Nagona (1990) and Mzingile (1991) pioneered experimental writing inSwahili and have, together with William Mkufya’s “epic novel” Ziraili na Zirani(1999), opened up unfathomed dimensions of religious and philosophical thought.Tanzanian realistic novels such as Emmanuel Mbogo’s Vipuli vya Figo (1996) orMkufya’s Ua la Faraja (2004) have dealt with such burning issues as illegal trafficwith human body transplants or the scourge of AIDS. The detailed discussion ofpopular literature (as opposed to élite writing) is very enlightening. The sectionon Zanzibar hinges on the works of the doyens of Zanzibari literature, ShafiAdam Shafi and Said Ahmed Mohamed. The latter has also made highly interestingcontributions to Swahili theatre (Amezidi, 1995).On the critical side, we could say that the occasional comparisons with works ofother literatures, such as Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Nagona with Friedrich Nietzsche’sThus Spoke Zarathustra or Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (p. 126), or Shafi AdamShafi’s Haini with Solzhenitsyn’s writings about the Gulag (p. 164), would be farmore revealing with a lengthier explanation of their presumed similarities. The con-nections appear haphazard, even inappropriate: for example, it is difficult to see howKezilahabi’s Nagona and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra are close “in [their] thematictreatment” (p. 126).The book contains some minor errors. For example, the date of publication ofWilliam Mkufya’s novel Ziraili na Zirani is wrongly given as 2002 in the narrative(p. 128), but is correct in both the appendixes (1999). In the appendix of biographi-cal and bibliographical information Mkufya’s Ua la Faraja is dated incorrectly(2002 instead of 2004). Disturbing as these mistakes are in a major referencework, they are probably inevitable in a work of this scope.R E V I E W S 595This updated edition of Outline of Swahili Literature will doubtless be appreci-ated by all those interested in its topic. It remains the only available “textbook” forcourses on modern Swahili literature. In this context it is regrettable that the priceof the book is so high: most students and also many scholars, publishers ofSwahili literature or Swahili writers themselves will hesitate to buy a copy. Itwould be highly desirable if the book could also be published in a cheaper paper-back format.Alena Rettová596 R E V I E W S

Review of "Elena Bertoncini Zúbková, Mikhail D. Gromov, Said A. M. Khamis and Kyallo Wadi Wamitila: Outline of Swahili Literature. Prose Fiction and Drama".

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Review of "Elena Bertoncini Zúbková, Mikhail D. Gromov, Said A. M. Khamis and Kyallo Wadi Wamitila: Outline of Swahili Literature. Prose Fiction and Drama".

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