THE BOY IS GONE: CONVERSATIONS WITH A MAU MAU GENERAL

Book ID/图书代码： 09894515B78933

English Summary/英文概要： A story with the power to change how people view the last years of colonialism in East Africa, The Boy Is Gone portrays the struggle for Kenyan independence in the words of a freedom fighter whose life spanned the twentieth century’s most dramatic transformations. Born into an impoverished farm family in the Meru Highlands, Japhlet Thambu grew up wearing goatskins and lived to stand before his community dressed for business in a pressed suit, crisp tie, and freshly polished shoes. For most of the last four decades, however, he dressed for work in the primary school classroom and on his lush tea farm.

The General, as he came to be called from his leadership of the Mau Mau uprising sixty years ago, narrates his life story in conversation with Laura Lee Huttenbach, a young American who met him while backpacking in Kenya in 2006. A gifted storyteller with a keen appreciation for language and a sense of responsibility as a repository of his people’s history, the General talks of his childhood in the voice of a young boy, his fight against the British in the voice of a soldier, and his long life in the voice of shrewd elder. While his life experiences are his alone, his story adds immeasurably to the long history of decolonization as it played out across Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 一部讲述了在东非殖民的最后岁月中，人们所经历的沧桑。在《消逝的男孩》描绘了为了争取肯尼亚独立，一位自由斗士跨越二十世纪的戏剧化人事变迁。出生在梅鲁高地的一个贫穷的农场家庭，Japhlet Thambu在西装革履之前，曾过着衣不蔽体，食不果腹的日子。在过去四十年的大部分时间里,他可是只在小学课堂,和在他华丽的茶农场会以正装出席。书中，曾经的男孩追忆其了六十年前，他身为茅茅党人（肯尼亚1951年出现的反对英国殖民统治的武装组织）的峥嵘岁月…… (Sandy)

Awards/获奖情况：“Those of us who teach African history are always looking for accessible and engaging books to assign our students. Africa is a vast unknown to most American college students. Most of us have developed strategies of easing them into the subject gently. Huttenbach’s book will fit the bill.”—John Mason, professor of African history at the University of Virginia and author of One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Capetown Carnaval

“Unsentimental and chillingly amusing, the saga of the General’s passage from boy to man is a tale of two civilizations caught in the creative and destructive form of contact we call colonialism…. Anyone wishing to broaden their understanding of what lies beneath the veil of stereotypes and Hollywood distortions of Africa, or who would enjoy meeting a character of uncommon intellect and grace, should read this book.”— Theodore Rosengarten, author of All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw

“Laura Lee did what every one of us in the African history field has always wanted to do. She actually lived with the family of her subject. They ate together, worked together (picking tea), stayed together. There is simply no better way for a White outsider to penetrate the core of Meru history.”— Jeffrey A. Fadiman, author of When We Began, There Were Witchmen: An Oral History from Mount Kenya

“The General’s story … will meet scholarly tests but will enchant a much wider audience … and will inform and broaden the views of western readers about Kenya’s important anti-colonial Mau Mau movement at a time when all Americans, through President Obama, have a need to know more about that country’s history.”— Peter H. Wood, author of Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina

About the Author/作者介绍： Laura Lee P. Huttenbach, a graduate of the University of Virginia, has written dispatches from South America, the Middle East, and Africa.

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Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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