Waiting - (Women Writing Africa) by Goretti Kyomuhendo (Paperback)

About the Book

Ugandans in a remote but closely knit community survive the end of Idi Amin's rule.

Book Synopsis

A Ugandan author's "unsettling and richly atmospheric" novel of a young African woman confronting the brutal end of Idi Amin's dictatorship (Publishers Weekly).

Safe for years in their remote Ugandan village, thirteen-year-old Alinda and her family are suddenly faced with the terror of the self-proclaimed "Last King of Scotland" when troops of his use the local highway to escape anti-Amin Ugandan and Tanzanian allied forces.

With her pregnant mother on the verge of labor, her brother anxious to join the Liberators, and a house full of hungry siblings, neighbors, and refugees, Alinda learns what it takes to endure terrible hardship, and to hope for a better tomorrow . . .

Set in the seventies during Idi Amin's last year of rule, Waiting evokes the fear and courage of a close-knit society in a novel "full of human interplay and pungent smaller events, told with a verbal chastity reflecting both tension and dawning adult consciousness" (Booklist).

Review Quotes

Praise for Waiting

"In a beautifully direct narration, [Kyomuhendo] is able to show her characters reacting to the horror that Amin's regime has put them through. While the story can be used pedagogically, the writing does not feel either syrupy or pedantic but instead profoundly realistic." -Library Journal

About the Author

Goretti Kyomuhendo was born and raised in Hoima, Western Uganda. She started writing in 1992 for Kampala-based newspapers and has since expanded in writing fiction; she has published four novels. Kyomuhendo also co-founded FEMRITE, a women's publishing house.