Rosa Mistika
A Novel
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A controversial Swahili classic by one of Tanzania's most revered writers, banned on publication and finally translated into English
Teenage Rosa lives with her parents and four younger sisters in a village on Ukerewe Island in Lake Victoria, where she attends the local school and helps out on the family farm. Life would be relatively peaceful if it weren't for Rosa's father, who drinks to oblivion and abuses his wife and daughters. Initially relieved to be admitted into a residential school on the mainland, Rosa soon discovers that she's ill prepared for life outside her village. As she becomes accustomed to the attention--and manipulations--of men, she begins to understand her sexuality as a weapon. But this understanding, born of the need to survive in a world of double standards, comes with a price.
Rosa Mistika is a radical narrative exploration of womanhood, maternal love, agency, and authority--and the first-ever Swahili novel to address issues of domestic violence, sexual coercion, and abortion. Through the story of a young woman and her community it poses the enduring question: To what degree are we responsible for the choices we make, and to what degree are we acted upon by forces outside our control?
About this Author
Euphrase Kezilahabi (1944-2020) was a Tanzanian novelist, poet, and scholar. Jay Boss Rubin is an award-winning translator from Swahili. Annmarie Drury is professor of English at Queens College, City University of New York.
Reviews
"Originally written in 1971, Kezilahabi's novel of changing cultural attitudes in Tanzania, particularly toward female sexuality, was at first banned, before becoming a classic. . . . Playing in the space between social realism and fabulist storytelling, [the] novel asks moral questions about parents' responsibilities and the effects of women's liberation, sparing no one but withholding final judgment."--New Yorker
"Engaging . . . a packed and quick-moving novel."--M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review
"A tremendously important novel."--Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature
"Carefully and beautifully translated, Rosa Mistika is a profound meditation on how we come to independence as individuals, as women and men steeped in patriarchy, and in societies still wearing neocolonial rags--and then when tasked with freedom, what we do with it."--Mukoma wa Ngugi, author of The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Identity, Language and Ownership
"First banned, Euphrase Kezilahabi's wonderful novel Rosa Mistika is now required reading. Neither fool nor victim, plucky Rosa discovers boys in this wild yet very believable tale, but it doesn't go well. She must struggle hard to dodge the obstacles of father, double standards, desire, and motherhood. Bringing Tanzanian mores to life for innocent readers everywhere, Rosa Mistika will become a classic for women all over the world."--Teresa Svoboda, winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and the translator of Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth: Nuer Song
"Thanks to Jay Boss Rubin, Euphrase Kezilahabi's powerful first novel, Rosa Mistika, finds its way into English at long last. For its sympathetic focus on the plight of women and girls in Tanzania, the novel is as relevant today as it was when first published in 1971."--Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Fat Time and Other Stories and Song of the Shank
"This cutting-edge translation of a book that has continuously stirred the Swahili literary scene gives us access to a world and contradictions that are rarely available in the West, at a time when we question what is translated, how, and why."--Ida Hadjivayanis, SOAS, University of London
"In Jay Boss Rubin's excellent rendering, I felt like I was reading Rosa Mistika in Swahili again, but also like I was reading the book for the first time. There are two languages here, not just one in place of another. A remarkable work of translation."--Idza Luhumyo, winner of the 2022 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing
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