Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. Though written in English, Abyssinian Chronicles was first published in the Netherlands in 1998, as Abessijne kronieken . See our review for fuller assessment. On the evidence of this ambitious but over-long first novel, his greater talent is in the realistic depiction of expatriation and the untidily hybrid nature of the new Europe. Nothing in his text eludes our first comprehension.
Nothing invites our second glance.
When Mugezi looks beyond the suffocating world of his own travails, however, he proves himself a perceptive observer. The Last King of Scotland offered a convincing glimpse of Amin's torturous regime, but Isegawa's work suggests a passionate immersion in his country's history that few Europeans could match. But the writing is awful. Isegawa s diction lurches clumsily between the grittiest street slang and pompous verbosity. Isegawa, however, lacks the technical resources to pull it off convincingly.