Red strangers Book

Red Strangers is the story of a Kikuyu village set at the time when the first European colonisers arrived in Kenya, and the changes that came with colonialism. In beautiful, exquisite prose Elspeth Huxley describes the ways of the Kikuyu, the pastures where young boys are herding the goats of their fathers, the sacred fig-trees whose roots grow down from heaven instead of up from earth, and the majestic peak of Kerinyagga (Mount Kenya).

High and remote, the peak floated in the clean air above them, guarded from the impudent feet of men by many spirits. Above, on the far white crest where no man could venture, was the seat of God. There he dwelt, sending rain or withholding it according to his pleasure. Sometimes, when he prepared to go on a journey, men could hear him cracking his joints with a noise of thunder; at such times they would not dare to look up into the sky, lest they should glimpse his majesty and perish.

The consideration that within a few years none will survive of those who remember the way of life that existed before the white man came was what led her to make the experiment of this book, wrote Huxley in her foreword. I'm so glad she did. This is a beautiful, beautiful book that deserves its place next to Karen Blixen's Out of Africa.