Magomero : Portrait of an African Village

Review
"Beautifully written, with a novelist's feel for story-telling and a poet's sensitivity to people and place...a work of meticulous scholarship...a major work of Malawian history, the most informative account to have been published on economic and social change in any part of the country." Journal of African History

"Magomero is not only beautifully written, but informed by a fine and appropriate sense of historical irony...in its historical perspective, its sensitivity to present local perceptions of the past, and above all for the manner in which it is written, it offers a model for the advancement of ethnography." Man

"Landeg White's elegant book is something of a minor masterpiece and may well influence writing about Africa more than its size, or the importance of its subject, would suggest at first...this book is a model of how to treat weighty matters with a lightness of touch and a readability that are wholly admirable." American Historical Review


Book Description
An insider's view of African historians' principal concerns--the slave trade, Christian missions, colonialism, land alienation and nationalism--is presented through this personalized account of a Malawi village from 1859 to the present.


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Magomero is a vivid historical portrait of a Malawian village from 1859 to the present day. It focuses on a region which saw historically important political activity, in the founding of a colony of freed slaves and the rising of an independent church movement against white estate owners. With the dual concerns of a Southern African specialist and a poet, Landeg White offers an 'inside' view of social, political and economic change in Malawi, seen through the lives of individuals: the ordinary men and women, whose situation and poverty have hitherto prevented recognition of their vital contribution to African history.


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