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Red Strangers

Red Strangers

Summary

Growing up in Kenya in the early twentieth century, the brothers Matu and Muthegi are raised according to customs that, they are told, have existed since the beginning of the world. But when the 'red' strangers come, sunburned Europeans who seek to colonize their homeland, the lives of the two Kikuyu tribesmen begin to change in dramatic new ways. Soon, their people are overwhelmed by unknown diseases that traditional magic seems powerless to control. And as the strangers move across the land, the tribe rapidly finds itself forced to obey foreign laws that seem at best bizarre, and that at worst entirely contradict the Kikuyu's own ancient ways, rituals and beliefs.

About the author

Elspeth Huxley

Elspeth Huxley was born in 1906, the daughter of Major Josceline Grant of Njoro, Kenya, where she spent most of her childhood. She was educated at the European School in Nairobi and at Reading University where she took a diploma in agriculture, and at Cornell University, USA. In 1929 she joined the Empire Marketing Board as a press officer. She married Gervas Huxley in 1931 and travelled widely with him in America, Africa and elsewhere. She was on the BBC General Advisory Council from 1952 to 1959, when she joined the Monckton Advisory Commission on Central Africa. She wrote novels, detective fiction, biography and travel titles, and her books include The Mottled Lizard (1962), The Challenge of Africa (1971), Livingstone and His African Journeys (1974), Florence Nightingale (1975), Scott of the Antartic (1977), Nellie: Letters from Africa (1980), Whipsnade: Captive Breeding for Survival (1981), The Prince Buys the Manor (1982), Last Days in Eden and Out in the Midday Sun: My Kenya (1985). She dies in 1997.
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