Dreamer's Paradise, A

A Dreamer's Paradise is an intriguing allegorical novel by a young Kenyan author. It deals with the misuse of power. The narrative arc that it traces is very wide — it begins in ordinary (even innocuously) realistic style, in a rural family setting, with the sentence “Mathina was the fourth child to be born to his parents”, and it concentrates throughout on the family setting and its joys and sorrows. From very early on, Mathina is made conscious of the tug of war between his parents — his mother being an intensely committed and increasingly zealous Christian, and his father a fierce traditionalist. Since the siblings who preceded him all died young, both parents focus their hopes — and their ideological commitments — on Mathina, who does his best to appease both his parents. The best way to do this, he discovers, is to excel at school — which he does, with an unbroken record of brilliant performances, always as the top achiever in his class.