 First edition | |
| Author | Elspeth Huxley |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Chatto and Windus (London) |
Publication date | 1939 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 406 pp |
| OCLC | 156758919 |
Red Strangers is a 1939 novel by Elspeth Huxley. [1] The story is an account of the arrival of European settlers to colonial Kenya told through the eyes of four generations of Kikuyu tribesmen in Kenya.
The book immerses the reader so completely in the pre-Western Kikuyu culture, that when the Kikuyu are paid money for their labour, it is quite easy to understand why they throw the coins into the bushes. After all, what does money do?
Epic in its scale, Red Strangers spans four generations of a Kikuyu family in Africa and its relationship with European settlers, nicknamed "red" strangers for their sunburns. [1] The book describes a Kenyan tribe and its way of life, with its rituals, its beliefs, its codes and its morality, and shows European customs in stark, unflattering contrast with Kikuyu traditions. The differences in cultural attitudes to war, methods of cultivation, the administering of justice, and the use of money are played out in the semi-fictional view of colonial rule in Kenya. [1]
The book was out of print for quite some time, but the British biologist Richard Dawkins wrote an article of appreciation for the novel in the Financial Times in 1998 that challenged "any reputable publisher to bring out a copy of their own." [2] Penguin Books published the novel in February 1999, with Dawkins's article as the foreword, [1] followed by a paperback in May 2006. [1] His article was reprinted in A Devil's Chaplain (2003). [3]
A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD. With the borders of the modern state at the crossroads of the Bantu, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of Africa, Kenya is a truly multi-ethnic state. The Wanga Kingdom was formally established in the late 17th century. The kingdom covered from the Jinja in Uganda to Naivasha in the East of Kenya. This is the first time the Wanga people and Luhya tribe were united and led by a centralized leader, a king, known as the Nabongo.
Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey was a Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa, particularly through discoveries made at Olduvai Gorge with his wife, fellow palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey. Having established a programme of palaeoanthropological inquiry in eastern Africa, he also motivated many future generations to continue this scholarly work. Several members of the Leakey family became prominent scholars themselves.
The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt, or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the British authorities. Dominated by Kikuyu, Meru and Embu fighters, the KLFA also comprised units of Kamba and Maasai who fought against the European colonists in Kenya, the British Army, and the local Kenya Regiment.
Jomo Kenyatta was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist, revolutionary, political theorist, cultural theorist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his death in 1978. He was the country's first president and played a significant role in the transformation of Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and a conservative, he led the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party from 1961 until his death.
The Kikuyu are a Bantu ethnic group native to East Africa Central Kenya. At a population of 8,148,668 as of 2019, they account for 17.13% of the total population of Kenya, making them Kenya's largest ethnic group.
The Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) was a political party in Kenya. It was founded in 1960 when several leading politicians refused to join Jomo Kenyatta's Kenya African National Union (KANU). It was led by Ronald Ngala who was joined by Moi's Kalenjin Political Alliance, the Masai United Front, the Kenya African Peoples Party, the Coast African Political Union, Masinde Muliro's Baluhya Political Union and the Somali National Front. The separate tribal organisations were to retain their identity and so, from the very start, KADU based its political approach on tribalism. KADU's aim was to defend the interests of the so-called KAMATUSA as well as the British settlers, against the imagined future dominance of the larger Luo and Kikuyu that comprised the majority of KANU's membership, when it became inevitable that Kenya will achieve its independence. The KADU objective was to work towards a multiracial self government within the existing colonial political system. After release of Jomo Kenyatta, KADU was becoming increasingly popular with European settlers and, on the whole, repudiated Kenyatta's leadership. KADU's plan at Lancaster meetings was devised by European supporters, essentially to protect prevailing British settlers land rights.
Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE was an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. She wrote over 40 books, including her best-known lyrical books, The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, based on her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.
The White Highlands is an area in the central uplands of Kenya. It was traditionally the homeland of indigenous Central Kenyan communities up to the colonial period, when it became the centre of European settlement in colonial Kenya, and between 1902 and 1961 was officially reserved for the exclusive use of Europeans by the colonial government.
White people in Kenya or White Kenyans are those born in or resident in Kenya who descend from Europeans and/or identify themselves as White. There is currently a minor but relatively prominent White community in Kenya, mainly descended from British, but also to a lesser extent Italian and Greek, migrants dating from the colonial period.
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Harry Thuku was a Kenyan born in Kiambu, Mitahato village. As a politician, he was one of the pioneers in the development of modern African nationalism in Kenya. He helped found the Young Kikuyu Association and the East African Association before being arrested and exiled from 1922 to 1931. In 1932 he became President of the Kikuyu Central Association, in 1935 founded the Kikuyu Provincial Association, and in 1944 founded the Kenya African Study Union. Opposed to the Mau Mau movement, he later retired to coffee-farming.
The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, commonly known as British Kenya or British East Africa, was part of the British Empire in Africa from 1920 until 1963. It was established when the former East Africa Protectorate was transformed into a British Crown colony in 1920. Technically, the "Colony of Kenya" referred to the interior lands, while a 16 km (10 mi) coastal strip, nominally on lease from the Sultan of Zanzibar, was the "Protectorate of Kenya", but the two were controlled as a single administrative unit. The colony came to an end in 1963 when an ethnic Kenyan majority government was elected for the first time and eventually declared independence.
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Marjorie Phyllis Oludhe Macgoye was born in Southampton, England, but immigrated to Kenya soon after Kenya became independent. She was a poet, novelist, and a missionary bookseller. She studied at the University of London for both her bachelor and master's degree. In 1954, she moved to Kenya to sell books and, while there, she met Daniel Oludhe Macgoye, a medical doctor, and they were married in 1960. She became a Kenyan citizen in 1964.
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