Novel
Dying in the Sun
Peter K. Palangyo · 1968
Synopsis
Ntanya returns to his village to be reconciled with his dying father, whom most of the villagers do not like. His grandmother, who raised his brothers and sisters after their mother's death, and the children welcome him joyfully. He meets his friends again, among them James, a better pupil than he was and now a civil servant at odds with the elders, and in a drinking den he meets Teresa, said to be the mistress of an old man with a murky past. They fall in love with each other, but as long as the father lies dying in his hut, nothing can be done.
Context
The novel was published in London in Heinemann's African Writers Series, then edited by Chinua Achebe, where it bears the number fifty-three, a year after the Arusha Declaration that committed Tanzania to ujamaa socialism. It is the first Tanzanian novel written in English, and the only novel by its author, who was afterwards absorbed by diplomacy. Its interior writing, attentive to the silences and mourning rites of the village, sets it apart from the protest novels of the same period.
Who it is for
A short novel in English, now out of print and little distributed, which can be read without any particular preparation.
Prizes and reception
Simon Gikandi regards it as one of the strongest modernist works of African literature of its time.