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Ugandans in a remote but closely knit community survive the end of Idi Amin's rule.
About the author
Goretti Kyomuhendo (1965- ) 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.
Summary
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).
Set in the seventies during the last year of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s brutal, often surreal rule, Waiting evokes the fear and courage of a small close-knit society uncertain of what the edicts of a madman or the marauding of his disintegrating army will bring with each day.
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 . . .
"Kyomuhendo delineates the strife of her war-torn country with vivid, unflinching verve." —Publishers Weekly
Foreword
Featured title at the African Studies and African Literature associations conferences as well as Modern Language Association. Advance bound galleys to national review outlets and African and African-America media. Promotion to African-American bookstores.
