Kmt: In The House Of Life

The Narrative: Mourning a lost firend, Lindela, the narrator of KMT, Ayi Kwei Armah's 7th novel, plunges into history, seeking meaning in life's flow. Loving companions - an Egyptolosit and two traditionalists-show her secret hieroglyphics texts left by migrant Egyptian scribes millennia ago. Lindela translates them, old questions animating her search for knowledge of self and society acquire a sharpened urgency: How best can Africa's multimillennial history be envisioned as one continuous stream? Why did the society that invented literacy sink into the misery of illiteracy, ignorance and religion? What creative African values lie buried under the lethal debris of slavery, colonialism, sructrual adjustment and globalization? And why did the ancient scribes call the concept of Ma'at our best promise of regeneration? KMT is the narrative of an African woman's life-quest, and of the answers she uncovers.