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A spare, luminous novel centred around the unforgettable voices of schoolgirls in Uganda who survive capture by the Lord's Resistance Army.
In northern Uganda in the 1990s, girls as young as eleven were abducted from schools and homes by the Lord's Resistance Army and thrust into the ravages of war. Facing endless treks, gun battles, and unwanted underage marriages while forced to be pawns in political machinations they did not understand, many did not survive. Those who did make it through now bear the physical and psychological weight of these experiences--often within communities that wish only to forget or ignore them.
As We, the Kindling begins, we meet Miriam, Helen, and Maggie, three survivors now in their late-twenties who are haunted by their teenage years spent in forced servitude to their captors. In graceful yet unflinching prose the novel weaves past with present, layering lively folk tales with taut realism to reveal the rhythm of the girls' lives before the war, unspooling the circumstances of their abductions, and tracing their perilous journeys home again. Reminiscent of The Buddha in the Attic, this is an extraordinary, starkly beautiful novel, full of care and humanity, that insistently refuses to spectacularize brutality and tragedy.
About this Author
OTONIYA JULIANE OKOT BITEK writes poetry and fiction. Her first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection of poetry, Song & Dread, is published by Talonbooks. Otoniya was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents and has lived in Canada for more than three decades. Her short story "Going Home" received a special mention in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Fiction Prize. We, the Kindling is her first novel.
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