Volume 47, Number 19 · November 30, 2000
Staring at the Medusa's Head
By Hilary Mantel
Abyssinian Chronicles
by Moses Isegawa
Knopf, 462 pp., $26.00
When Serenity was three years old, his mother went shopping and never came back. For a long time he used to walk up to tall women who visited his Ugandan village, and say to them, 'Welcome home.' He met often with baffled kindness, but finally with an experience of rejection that sent him inside himself, indifferent to other people; this is how he got his nickname. Serenity is the heir to his father's estates, and he is the father of this novel's narrator and controlling intelligence: John Chrysostom Noel Muwaabi Mugezi. The name in itself shows his mixed and complicated origins. His mother, an ex-nun, is responsible for the pious part. 'Muwaabi,' given by his father, means 'prosecutor'; he is to become a lawyer and revenge slights to the family's honor and prosperity. 'Mugezi,' also given by Serenity, means 'brilliant, intelligent,' and it is the name he chooses to keep when 'the time came to scrap the ballast of my nominal encumbrance.' To the people around him, Mugezi will not be known for modesty; to the reader, he will not be known for his snappy phrasing.
Review, 4130 words
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