Shakespeare in Swahililand: In Search of a Global Poet

by Edward Wilson-Lee PhD

Overview

An exploration of Shakespeare as a global poet

Shakespeare in Swahililand tells the unexpected literary history of Shakespeare’s influence in East Africa. Beginning with Victorian-era expeditions in which Shakespeare’s works were the sole reading material carried into the interior, the Bard has been a vital touchstone throughout the region. His plays were printed by liberated slaves as one of the first texts in Swahili, performed by Indian laborers while they built the Uganda railroad, used to argue for native rights, and translated by intellectuals, revolutionaries, and independence leaders.

Weaving together stories of explorers staggering through Africa’s interior, eccentrics living out their dreams on the savanna, decadent émigrés, Cold War intrigues, and even Che Guevara, Edward Wilson-Lee—a Cambridge lecturer raised in Kenya—tallies Shakespeare’s influence in Zanzibar, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Traveling through these countries, he speaks with everyone from theater directors and academics to soldiers and aid workers, discovering not only cultural dimensions traceable to Shakespeare's plays but also an overwhelming insistence that these works provide a key insight into the region.

An astonishing work of empathy and historical vision, Shakespeare in Swahililand gets at the heart of what makes Shakespeare so universal and the role that his writings have played in thinking about what it means to be human.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374537265
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Edward Wilson-Lee was raised in Kenya by conservationist parents, studied English at University College London, and completed a doctorate at Oxford and Cambridge. Over the past few years he has spent extended periods in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. He now lives in Cambridge with his wife and son, and teaches Shakespeare at Sidney Sussex College.

Table of Contents

Prelude: Beauty Out of Place ix

1 The Lake Regions: Shakespeare and the Explorers 1

2 Zanzibar: Shakespeare and the Slaveboy Printworks 29

3 Interlude: The Swahili Coast: Player-Kings of Eastern Africa 57

4 Mombasa: Shakespeare, Bard of the Railroad 85

5 Nairobi: Expats, Emigrés and Exile 109

6 Kampala: Shakespeare at School, at War and in Prison 135

7 Dar ES Salaam: Shakespeare in Power 161

8 Addis Ababa: Shakespeare and the Lion of Judah 187

9 Panafrica: Shakespeare in the Cold War 213

10 Juba: Shakespeare, Civil War and Reconstruction 231

Appendix: A Partial List of Theatrical Performances Licensed in the Official Gazette of the East Africa Protectorate, 1915-16 243

A Note on Sources and Further Reading 247

Acknowledgements 253

Notes 257

List of Illustrations 279

Index 281

Editorial Reviews

"Wilson-Lee enjoyably melds memoir, history, and literary travelogue to reveal the surprising hold that Shakespeare continues to have on a culture remote from his own." —Kirkus Reviews

"Wilson-Lee draws a rich portrait of a region of Africa in which Shakespeare was familiar, adored, and widely performed with numerous local embellishments. Acrobatic in style and impressive in scholarship." —Publishers Weekly

"There is no better time to recommend Shakespeare in Swahililand: In Search of a Global Poet. A lecturer at Cambridge, Wilson-Lee was born on the African continent and spent his formative years in Kenya. This book evinces a remarkable familiarity with Africa, filtered through the lens of that most-English poet and playwright." —The New Criterion

"Edward Wilson-Lee . . . has successfully told a lesser-known story of Africa, and it is a story worth knowing." —The Economist

"A fascinating book—part travelogue, part cultural history . . . Wilson-Lee proves a perceptive and entertaining guide to the Bard's influence in Swahililand." —Andrew Lycett, Literary Review

"Wilson-Lee’s account of his East African Shakespeare-hunt is vivid and full of insights." —Daniel Hahn, The Independent

From the Publisher

05/23/2016
Wilson-Lee, a fellow in English at Cambridge University, spent his childhood in Kenya, and he intersperses his scholarly, rather esoteric study of Shakespeare in colonial East Africa with his own recollections and impressions in this complex, challenging work. As Wilson-Lee admits, his book is as much personal memoir and travelogue as inquiry into Shakespeare’s appeal across continents. He begins with explorers Richard Burton and Henry Morton Stanley, who brought Shakespeare to the region he calls Swahililand—today’s Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda—and fetishized Shakespeare as an antidote to “going native.” He then describes how, in 1867, the missionary Edward Steere translated storybook versions of Shakespeare’s plays into Swahili. Wilson-Lee draws a rich portrait of a region of Africa in which Shakespeare was familiar, adored, and widely performed with numerous local embellishments. Acrobatic in style and impressive in scholarship, his account arrives 400 years after Shakespeare’s death with a cross-cultural bang. It is not an easy book to digest. Wilson-Lee’s florid language, off-topic ramblings, travel adventures, and speculative flights widen his report but come at the cost of coherence and clarity. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Friedman Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

10/01/2016
Wilson-Lee (English, Cambridge Univ.) rejects the view that Shakespeare represents British imperialism. Part travelog, part meditation on Shakespeare's role in East Africa ("Swahililand"), his book explores diverse ways in which Shakespeare has been adapted to situations and needs of countries in this region. Julius Kambarage Nyerere, first president of Tanzania, translated The Merchant of Venice as a vehicle to foster his anticapitalist agenda. George Mungai staged the play in Nairobi, Kenya, with Gikuyu businessmen. Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin produced Othello in Ethiopia because he thought it mirrored his country's condition. On South Africa's Robben Island in the late 1970s, Nelson Mandela and 33 other political prisoners marked their favorite passages in a volume of Shakespeare that has become known as the "Robben Island Bible." For the imprisoned men these lines expressed their political struggle. To mark South Sudanese independence from Sudan, actors from that fledgling country performed Cymbeline at the Globe in London in 2012 because the play recounts a successful rebellion against a dominant overlord. VERDICT This readable account shows that Shakespeare is universal because his work can be read in all types of environments, reflecting eternal truths and current conditions worldwide.—Joseph Rosenblum, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Library Journal

2016-06-21
Pursuing the Bard across the history, geography, and culture of East Africa.Wilson-Lee (English/Sidney Sussex Coll.; co-editor: Translation and the Book Trade in Early Modern Europe, 2014), who spent his childhood in East Africa and teaches Shakespeare, takes readers on a trek through Zanzibar, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan to discover Shakespeare's legacy on those areas. He begins with famous African explorers for whom Shakespeare was indispensable; Sir Richard Francis Burton carried a volume of Shakespeare while crossing both bog and savanna when he set out to find the source of the Nile. Henry Morton Stanley "recounted burning his copy of Shakespeare to mollify tribesmen who viewed his books as witchcraft. Wilson-Lee chronicles his visit to Zanzibar, the site of Edward Steere's 1867 printing of the Hadithi za Kiingereza, a collection of four Shakespearean tales and one of the earliest printed publications in Swahili; and Mombasa, where, at the end of the 19th century, tens of thousands of Indians arrived to build the railways, bringing their love of Shakespeare with them. The author also discusses his visit to Makerere University in Kampala, where teaching and performance of Shakespeare flourished during the 1940s; Dar es Salaam, where the first president of Tanzania translated Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice into Swahili; and Ethiopia, where Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin won favor from Emperor Haile Selassie for his production of Othello. In Nairobi, on the grounds of the coffee farm described by Karen Blixen in Out of Africa, Wilson-Lee reminisces about his youth among the Gikuyu people there. At its core, Shakespeare in Swahililand is as much the author's story as it is Shakespeare's or Africa's. Wilson-Lee enjoyably melds memoir, history, and literary travelogue to reveal the surprising hold that Shakespeare continues to have on a culture remote from his own.

Kirkus Reviews