Description
In A Call at Midnight, Grace Ogot offers a powerful and haunting narrative set against the turbulent backdrop of 1970s Uganda under Idi Amin’s despotic regime. The story centers on Emanuel and June Bugembe, whose lives are suddenly upended when Amin seizes power. Emanuel, once elevated from under-secretary to permanent secretary, resigns in protest and flees into exile in Kenya under a borrowed identity, while June and their children seek refuge in the countryside as they struggle to evade the reach of state agents.
As June endures a perilous journey—eventually becoming lost in the anonymity of Kampala and later a smuggler in Kenya—she forges a new life with Solomon, a Kenyan man. Their union, borne of necessity and survival, results in children and a modest prosperity born of the murky cross-border trade. But when peace is restored in Uganda and June returns home, her past catches up with her. In a dramatic and chilling turn, Emanuel reappears, posing a threat to the tenuous life she has built. A desperate June resorts to poisoning Solomon in order to safeguard her future—and the “call at midnight” is the moment when their fractured past collides with their present realities.
Rich in themes—political oppression and corruption, the moral complexities of survival in exile, shifting gender roles, and the unsettling consequences of survival-driven choices—this novel is both a historical chronicle and a gripping human drama
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