Two hundred years ago, a girl was born into the Oromo tribe, which occupies land in southern Ethiopia as well as in the far north of Kenya. At a time when men ruled the world and young women had no authority whatsoever, Hawecha gradually rose to a position of unprecedented leadership and power. She became the most famous Prophetess of the Oromo people, saving them from famine, pestilence, war and death. Eventually, she became a part of their oral history. In 1986, a Catholic Mission near the Kenya/Ethiopia border founded the first school for Oromo girls in Kenya, using the story of Hawecha as their inspiration. Rhodia Mann was born in Kenya and studied Oromo culture under a highly-respected oral historian and mystic. She attended major Oromo ceremonies in northern Kenya, and also visited the Oromo in southern Ethiopia. Presented as a historical novel, the legend of Hawecha is used as a means to bring a fascinating and little-known culture to the wider world.

The Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English. This volume offers an overview of contemporary Eastern African writing in English since the mid-twentieth century. It takes a fresh look at what has been an under-represented regional literary tradition within what continues to be an under-represented continental literary tradition. In particular, it broadens the scope of such an overview, complementing the extant monographs on well-known Eastern African writers such as Ngũgĩ to include a host of more recent, less-publicized novelists, dramatists, and poets. It extends the geographical range of existing studies from the familiar triad of Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian traditions of writing in English, to include the lesser-known Somali, Ethiopian, or Sudanese, or Mauritian or Madagascan traditions. Rather than simply addressing national traditions or broad thematic bundles, the volume treats works as literatures of a region: that is, as literatures of place and space. Eastern African Literatures stresses the formative role of space, place and geography in fashioning the fabric of social interaction, whether individual or collective, in generating history, in moulding identities, and as a consequence in defining the shape of the future. The 'spatial' perspectives allow the 'proximate' rather than the 'distant' influence of literary art to come into view. Proximate modes of literary communication, arising out of residual but vibrant traditions of oral communication, blend with contemporary media to produce hybrid genres of proximity specific to Eastern African literary production. In this way, the book also makes a contribution to the ongoing theorization of literary and cultural innovation in the cultures of the Global South.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World examines Judaism in Palestine throughout the Hellenistic period, from Alexander the Great's conquest in 334BC to its capture by the Arabs in AD 636. Under the Greek, Roman and finally Christian supremacy which Hellenism brought, Judaism developed far beyond its biblical origins into a form which was to influence European history from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book focuses particularly on the social, economic and religious concerns of this period, and the political status of the Jews as both active agents and passive victims of history. The author provides a straightforward chronological survey of this important period through analysis and interpretation of the existing sources. With its accessible style and explanation of technical terms, the book provides a useful introduction to students and anybody with an interest in post-biblical Judaism.