A Crown of Fire

by Sam Okello

The story is set in the period between the late sixties and the early nineties. It was a time when missionaries from the West roamed the African church landscape, hoping to usher in Christ to the animists. In these efforts, they met stiff resistance from cultural and nationalistic forces, that in a curious way, were extremely oppressive to the very people who ignorantly sought to keep them in place. Atieno, the heroin of the story, emerges as the most fascinating, eloquent and intelligent leader of a brand of Africans, who through interaction with Western education, seek to undo all the shackles that keep her people from experiencing life at its best. Through her deep struggles, one feels the pangs of what just about every African born outside the narrow power corridors of Africa has Hopelessness. Yet, in A Crown of Fire, she almost single-handedly takes on every institution and force that castrate her people and eventually emerges victorious in ways that the reader must appreciate and debate...

153 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2002