WINNER OF THE 2020 CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 “Engrossing, beautiful, and deeply imaginative, Out of Darkness, Shining Light is a novel that lends voice to those who appeared only as footnotes in history, yet whose final, brave act of loyalty and respect changed the course of it. An incredible and important book by a masterful writer.” –Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing … writer.” –Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing
“This is how we carried out of Africa the poor broken body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, David Livingstone, so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own land.” So begins Petina Gappah’s powerful novel of exploration and adventure in nineteenth-century Africa–the captivating story of the loyal men and women who carried explorer and missionary Dr. Livingstone’s body, his papers and maps, fifteen hundred miles across the continent of Africa, so his remains could be returned home to England and his work preserved there. Narrated by Halima, the doctor’s sharp-tongued cook, and Jacob Wainwright, a rigidly pious freed slave, this is a story that encompasses all of the hypocrisy of slavery and colonization–the hypocrisy at the core of the human heart–while celebrating resilience, loyalty, and love.
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A sweeping epic that is also startlingly intimate, Out of Darkness, Shining Light is a revelation. In luminous prose, Petina Gappah gives voice to people silenced by history, allowing them the full scope of their humanity, from petty gossip to self-righteous evangelism to romantic longings and dreams for the future. She grapples with what it means to explore other cultures, to seek answers to the questions ‘what if?’ and ‘what else?’ In doing so, she holds a funhouse mirror up to colonialist narratives like Heart of Darkness, revealing their distortions.
Mixing painstaking research with a formidable imagination, Petina Gappah resurrects the brave, misguided, heroic, and ill-starred party who hauled the dried-up corpse of Dr. David Livingstone across 1,000 miles of African interior to the Indian Ocean. Her narrators, a hilarious cook named Halima and a sanctimonious Christian named Jacob, cut a swath through a continent at the crossroads of colonization, superstition, religion, and slavery, illuminating the contradictions inherent in every life. This is a beautiful novel.
Petina Gappah’s Out of Darkness, Shining Light describes a world on the cusp of change. Her narrators, Halima and Jacob, both former slaves — along with a cohort of sixty-some Africans and Arabs — carry a dead muzungu (white person) for nine months across impossible 19th-century African terrain. While they ultimately reach their destination, delivering a wizened body to the awaiting arms of their future colonizers, the greater catastrophe is still to come. Petina Gappah knows what she writes; her historical and cultural insights add texture and veracity to every page. A powerful novel, beautifully told, Out of Darkness, Shining Light reveals as much about the present circumstances as the past that helped create them.
Engrossing, beautiful, and deeply imaginative, Out of Darkness, Shining Light, is a novel that lends voice to those who appeared only as footnotes in history, yet whose final, brave act of loyalty and respect changed the course of it. An incredible and important book by a masterful writer.
This is what I think of as a warp/weft novel, reframing a story we think we know. Other examples include Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, which offers the story of Bertha Mason, the madwoman whose story is reduced to Rochester’s contemptuous narrative in Jane Eyre; Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which illuminates aspects of Woolf as she wrote Mrs. Dalloway; and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, which imagines the backstory of Magwitch in Great Expectations. Gappah’s novel reframes the Scotsman David Livingstone’s explorations of Africa, which is traditionally refracted through the English/American Henry Morton Stanley’s account of finding Livingstone at Ujiji. Set in 1870s Africa, this book imagines the perspectives of the native Africans who buried Livingstone’s heart in the jungle and brought his dried bones to Bagamoyo on the east coast. The first section is told by Halima, the shrewd and sharp-tongued cook. and the second by Jacob Wainwright, one of the “Nassick boys” who were seized from slave ships and educated by the British in a school in Bombay. She is voluble and wryly humorous; he is self-righteous and naive, and their comments about each other add spice and humor. (To be honest, I found Halima’s section more engaging.) There is a full complement of secondary characters, including Stanley, the various villagers, thieves, porters, chiefs, and children. The novel is immersive, thoughtful, and profoundly aware of how our experience is deeply subjective, and the stories we tell ourselves shape our lives. I think fans of Geraldine Brooks’s YEAR OF WONDERS will enjoy this book. Recommend to fans of historical fiction.
Truth is often stranger than fiction, for who would imagine that the body of Doctor David Livingstone would be carried 1000 miles across Africa, under threat of dangers including kidnapping into slavery, so he could be shipped back to England and rest in his native land? It seems the stuff of legend. But it happened in 1873. Petina Gappah spent ten years researching this journey, then imagining the forgotten people whose dedication to the Doctor spurred their journey.
I had hoped for a great adventure story and found a journey that vividly recreates late 19th c Africa with its clash of cultures, religions, and power. It is filled with unforgettable characters, culminates in an explosive late revelation, and brings to light the impact of colonization.
The Doctor’s missionary zeal abated while his anti-slavery zeal and respect for the Africans grew. He became obsessed with discovering the source of the Nile, believing its discovery would bring him the status and power to advance his ideals. When Stanley found the missing Livingstone he was already ill but would not return to civilization. The mixed group he had gathered, Africans, Muslims, manumitted slaves, and mission-trained Christian blacks, were left with the responsibility for his remains. They buried his heart and organs, dried his body, and proceeded to walk 279 days to Zanzibar.
Gappah tells the story in two voices. The appealing Halima was documented as Livingstone’s cook, bought from slavery and freed by him. Halina’s mother was a concubine in the house of a servant of the Sultan. Halima was a bondswoman passed from man to man. She dreams of the house Livingstone promised her. Then there is Jacob Wainwright, bought from slavery and sent to the mission school, a devote Christian who quotes The Pilgrim’s Progress. Jacob’s tale is stilted in language and filled with religious concerns, he is dislikeable and arrogant. He struggles with his passions and questions of faith. And yet, this faithful, educated, ambitious man’s hopes are dashed because of his color and ethnicity.
The journey is rife with conflict and even death as the men vie for power and control and importance–and women. They face enemies and famine. They see hopeless villages devoid of their youth by the slavers. And everywhere, dry bones tied to trees, kidnapped Africans left by the slavers to die. Instead of welcome and assistance, the Europeans confiscate essentials.
“…this was no longer just the last journey of the Doctor, but our journey too. I was no longer just about the Doctor, about the wrongs and rights of bearing him home, or burying him here or buying him there, but about all that we had endured. It was about our fallen comrades.” ~from Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah
How did this one man, this Doctor Livingstone, manage to inspire such loyalty? He was beloved because of his acceptance and respect for those he met, his understanding of human nature, his commitment to ending slavery–liberal Christian values out-of-sync with his time.
“But out of that great and troubling darkness came shining light. Our sacrifice burnished the glory of his life.” ~from Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah
I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.