Mr Myombekere and His Wife Bugonoka. Their Son Ntulanalwo and Daughter Bulihwali:
The Story of an Ancient African Community
Aniceti Kitereza & translated by Gabriel Ruhumbika
This story unfolds amidst the traditional social and cultural life of the people inhabiting Ukerewe in northern Tanzania. It tells of the lives of Mr Mr Myombekere and his wife Bugonoka whose love survives despite their failure to conceive children in a polygamous society where sterility is stigmatised, bearing children is a central source of meaning in life, and a man is expected to marry additional women until he produces a child. This couple remain committed only to one another and search for a cure to their ailment. Their actions strengthen their relationship, and they become an exemplary couple in their society, finally rewarded by the birth of a son and daughter. The genesis and evolution of Kitereza’s epic novel and its context is as perhaps as remarkable as the work itself. Kitereza was born in Ukerewe in 1896 and wrote at the height of colonial rule, in part to preserve a culture threatened with extinction. He wished to keep alive the relationships of a people with one another and the land, and the spirit of cooperation on which their social life was based. He chose to write in his native Kikerewe because ‘above all, I wanted this to be a way of preserving the language of our ancestors, by showing the reader how beautifully they spoke to each other’. The novel was first published in 1945, and then in the author’s own Kiswahili translation in 1980, when it was greeted with acclaim and received an honourable mention in The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. This is the first complete translation into English by Gabriel Ruhumbika a writer, professor of literature and descendant of Kitereza who had access to the author’s manuscripts and diaries. Ruhumbika provides also a comprehensive introduction and explanatory notes on the text.

"The originality of Kitereza’s novel derives from its depiction of the African world, with its intrinsic logic and capacity to foster communal solidarity… The African world view is not contrasted with rationalism and European modernity… incorporates both forms of thought and Kitereza portrays them as fundamental constituents of the human condition."
– Research in African Literatures

"An important event for the history of literature in Africa."
- (Etudes Litteraires Africaines)

"This novel makes a compulsive read."
- (Tanzanian Affairs)