The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o is about the Gikuyu people of Kenya who lived in a remote area of ridges and valleys. The time is during the early days of white settlement, some of the people were lured by the new religion and “magical” customs and so they followed Joshua, a Gikuyu convert who preached Christianity. Others wanted to keep to the tribal customs and old ways. Battle lines over female circumcision have been drawn as the Christians try to outlaw the pagan practice while the traditionalists feel it is an important part of their culture.

Firmly in the middle stands Waiyaki a young man who has been educated by the missionaries but belongs to a family of visionaries who foresaw the coming of the white man and the turmoil, changes and confusion that would arise with their arrival. To make matters more complicated he falls in love with Nyambura, the Christian daughter of the fiery pastor, Joshua. Waiyaki believes that education is the answer but he also wants to honour his father’s wishes without really understanding what his father was trying to say.

[The River Between] stands as a social critique as there is, of course, no answer to the problems that the Gikuyu were facing. The two factions were both doomed as once colonialism and Christianity get a firm hold and white settlers arrive in their numbers, the rift will continue to grow and tribal independence along with their customs and culture will disappear. ( )

What a hard book to review. Almost fable-like, it describes a black savior trying to protect his people from the invading white people. It’s beautiful in its telling. Conversely, it praises female circumcision as an important rite signifying the tribe’s independence from the “evil” Christians. At once I want to love and hate this book. It was written by a Kenyan man in the early 1960s before circumcision was decried for its brutality. But the author was considered a “progressive.” Ha! I think he portrayed the gross outcome of the practice in the story but I can’t get past this statement supporting its continuation: “Circumcision of women was not important as a physical operation. It was what it did inside a person. It could not be stopped overnight. Patience and, above all, education, were needed.” I still give the book a pick; it’s an authentic viewpoint told well even if I find parts of it despicable. ( )

Zsenánt vagy sem, én már annyira hozzánőttem a nyugati típusú szépirodalomhoz, hogy szükségem van a cselekmény komplexitására a mű élvezetéhez – vagy ha az nincs, legalább a stílus vagy a gondolat újszerűségére. Nos, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o könyvét igazából ezek közül egyik sem jellemzi – ami például a stílus újszerűségének tűnik, az egyszerűen helyrajzi következmény, és abból fakad, hogy az író kenyai, és Kenyáról ír*. Amúgy ez egy szimpla vonalvezetésű Rómeó és Júlia-sztori, Waiyaki és Nyambura szerelmének története, akiknek igazából találkozniuk sem szabadott volna, hiszen annyi minden választja el őket. Az író két csoportkonfliktust hoz játékba: egyrészt ütközik a kereszténység és az ősi vallás, másrészt pedig egymásnak feszül a haladó és a maradó (vagy haladi és maradi?) gondolkodás. No most a shakespear-i alaptörténet fő tanulsága számomra (azon túl, hogy nem tanácsos elsietni egy öngyilkosságot sem) az, hogy két ellenséges közösség közül nem feltétlenül van valamelyiknek igaza, Jóra és Rosszra való felosztásuk önkényes, és nézőpont kérdése. Mi több: nem is beszélhetünk igazságról abban az esetben, ha ezek az ideológiák elválasztanak egymástól két egymáshoz vonzódó lényt – helyesebb ilyenkor talán a fanatizmus szót használni. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o szépen, rutinosan, helyenként megrázóan viszi végig ezt az ívet a végkifejletig, szavunk se lehet rá. Csak éppen végig ott motoszkált a fejemben, hogy ha ez a történet nem Kenyában, hanem mondjuk Iowában játszódik, Nyambura és Waiyaki helyet pedig mondjuk Mary és James a két főszereplő, akkor egy ügyes, de nem egyedülálló young adults lenne a végeredmény. Ha van benne vérfarkas, akkor ki is adja a Könyvmolyképző.

* Paradox módon az a tény, hogy egy kenyai ír Kenyáról, oda vezet, hogy evidensnek vesz és nem részletez olyan dolgokat, amik neki kenyaiként (gikujuként) nyilván természetesek, ugyanakkor én szívesen tudnék meg róluk többet. ( )

A moving and insightful account of the adaptation of individuals and whole communities in colonial Kenya to the imposed culture of the occupiers. A wonderful book with a potent conclusion. ( )

Well, this is a book that took me right out of my comfort zone... I like to think that I am respectful of other cultures, but not when they conflict with my own deeply held liberal-democratic values about human rights.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is an author often suggested as a potential winner of the Nobel Prize, and this book, The River Between is listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

At one level, this is a simple love story set in the mid-colonial period, an African Romeo and Juliet in which two young people from opposing Gikuyu villages fall in love and attempt to transcend the ancient rift between their communities, with tragic results. On a more complex level, the novel engages with Kenya's precolonial and colonial history. It depicts the slow but steady infiltration by the British; the alienation of local people from their land; the negative effects of Christian mission on local power structures, rituals and relationships; and the deep disunity between different African factions that preceded the anticolonial struggle of the 1950s. (1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Ed. Perter Boxall, ABC Books, 2006 Edition, p.574)

Well, yes, it does all that in just 152 pages, and it does so in deceptively simple language and an ordinary chronological structure. But what made me read it with a sense of seething rage was the way circumcision, and female circumcision in particular, is used to symbolise the purity of the tribe and is therefore a ritual worth protecting against change.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/26/the-river-between-by-ngugi-wa-thiongo-bookre...
Joshua is a Christianised firebrand preacher who has decreed that his daughters will not be circumcised because it is a pagan ritual. Muthoni, the elder of the two, decides that she wants to be a real woman, knowing all the ways of the hills and ridges, so she defies her father and takes part in the annual initiation ceremonies. So does Waiyaki, a young man who tentatively believes his father's prophecy that he will be a leader of his people. Thiong'o describes at length the agony of the male circumcision, without a word about the agony of the female experience, nor the denial of her sexuality, nor the risks associated with not only the lack of basic surgical hygiene but also the risk of death or permanent disabling injury in childbirth. Opposition to circumcision is parcelled up with all the other wrongs that the Christianising colonising interlopers bring with them: dispossession, racism, taxes and political interference, as if the missionaries could even have known about female circumcision if not for witnessing its terrible consequences in their hospitals. Thiong'o addresses the male expectation that their wives be circumcised only obliquely, by depicting his villagers' assertion that no man would want to trade his cows for an uncircumcised wife, and he makes Muthoni complicit in her own mutilation by investing the procedure with secret female knowledge while never mentioning that female circumcision is merely a brutal technique for ensuring fidelity because intercourse is consequently so painful. Muthoni dies, and the villagers ascribe her death to the malevolent influence of the new religion. There is no mention of the infection which is obvious to any contemporary reader, only its symptoms. To read the rest of my review please visit ( )