Ghosts of Illemi
By Otieno Ogai
Nathaniel Otieno Ogai was born in Nairobi, Kenya on 16 April 1965 and attended primary and secondary education in the same city. In 1986 he joined the Kenya Air Force as an Air Cadet commissioning the following year as a Second Lieutenant. He qualified in 1989 as Squadron Pilot. Between 2003 to 2004 he served as a Military Observer with the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). He lectured at the South African National War College in Pretoria from 2015 to 2017. He retired from the Service in December 2017 and took up writing as a vocation. “Ghosts of Illemi” is his first novel.
Get a copy
Ghosts of Illemi
Jokobam Andries Liech and his three brothers are sons of the Anywaa nation. Set in late 19th Century Sudan, theirs is a tale of resistance, endurance, and fortitude against forceful elements of change visited upon their people by a myriad of alien cultures. As the Ottoman Empire strives to subjugate its vast territory and her independent nations, turmoil besets the land. Christian missionaries traverse the region evangelizing while slavers and soldiers of fortune roam the land wantonly raiding the native communities and disrupting their idyllic lives. Growing up during a time of great upheaval, they experience love, war, triumph, and loss. In its wake are left ghostly shadows that linger on to the present time.
Ghosts of Illemi is a seminal work of historical fiction, a tapestry of fact and fiction, mythology and religion, war and peace. It offers the reader an experience of life in precolonial Sudan from the perspective of her native sons.
