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the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



Rosa Mistika

by
Euphrase Kezilahabi


general information | our review | links | about the author

To purchase Rosa Mistika


Title: Rosa Mistika
Author: Euphrase Kezilahabi
Genre: Novel
Written: 1971 (Eng. 2025)
Length: 157 pages
Original in: Swahili
Availability: Rosa Mistika - US
Rosa Mistika - UK
Rosa Mistika - Canada
from: Bookshop.org (US)
  • Swahili title: Rosa Mistika
  • Translated by Jay Boss Rubin
  • Foreword by Annmarie Drury

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Our Assessment:

B : a bit rough in the telling, but certainly engaging

See our review for fuller assessment.



The complete review's Review:

       At fifteen when the novel opens, Rosa Mistika is the oldest of Regina and Zakaria's five children -- all girls. The family lives on Ukerewe, a large island in Lake Victoria. Zakaria was once a schoolteacher, but is now a good-for-nothing drunk. He contributes nothing to his children's school fees, but they have been able to attend school thanks to Regina's farming and the four cows she had inherited -- though she has already sold two of them by this time. Zakaria brutalizes his family as well -- including when he hears that Rosa has gotten a letter in which the boy she walks to and from school with every day, Charles, professes his love. He beats Rosa, and warns Charles off; and: "After the beating, Rosa ceased talking to boys altogether".
       Kezilahabi condemns Zakaria, noting that his strictness was damaging to the girl at this difficult age -- not least because:

He didn't understand that Rosa needed to get to know boys. And so, as a result of her upbringing, Rosa began to see boys as people she need not associate with, or even speak to. She began to think that she needed to be self-sufficient. Rosa grew more remote by the day.
       As she will lament years later:
     "Charles, what my father did hurt me more than you can imagine. Oh, Charles," Rosa sighed, "if parents could only understand that a single action of theirs can destroy their children's lives, they'd grasp the weight of their authority and be more careful"
       It is the main lesson that Kezilahabi offers in his novel, that too much -- and the wrong kind -- of strictness is deeply damaging. So also then, one of Rosa's sisters explains:
     "Maybe you can tell me something," Charles ventured. "Why do so many more girls get pregnant at your school than at other schools ?"
     "The main reason, I think," Flora said, "is that we don't have enough freedom. We are watched over, guarded and herded, al the time."
     "On this point, I agree with you," Charles said. "You aren't granted sufficient independence. If they're going to watch over you, they could at least watch over you in a way that makes sense. The way they go about it is completely impractical."
       For a time, Rosa does well at school, and she is able to continue her education at an all-girls boarding school, Rosary. She works hard and tries to stay out of trouble -- "'All I care about,' Rosa explained, 'is reading books'" -- but it's impossible for her to stay above the fray. And this pushes her to ... go out dancing, where puberty hits her like a ton of bricks.
       Rosa is immediately swept off her feet by the first man who kisses her, the completely inappropriate Deogratias -- "one of those old men who think of themselves as still young. One of those old men who prefer little girlies -- girls young enough to be their daughters, girls who are just beginning to grow breasts" --, and, returning to school, she is completely overwhelmed by lust, to the extent that she seeks out a friend at four-thirty in the morning:
     "Can you help me, Thereza ?" Rosa said, voice trembling. Thereza had yet to understand what was going on when Rosa leaped toward her and embraced her. They tumbled on top of each other as they fell onto the bed. Rosa started to kiss her but it didn't sate her desire. Rosa needed the scratch-scratch of a rough beard and a hairy stomach. A fire blazed in the southern region of Rosa's body. But up north, the fire quickly flamed out.
       Rosa starts to neglect her studies -- though she still manages to get a spot at a teaching college. Her affair with Deogratias is at least conveniently cut short, but her lust is not diminished -- and so: "She was derailed by just one thing -- she loved to please boys". She really gets around; eventually, she's: "well-known throughout Morogoro, even in the city center"; things do not go well. Still, eventually she manages to get half on track again and complete her studies, and even gets a primary school teaching position: "There, she hoped to embark on a new existence".
       Rosa winds up in the same town as Charles, and they reconnect, and their love blossoms again. But Rosa holds him off some, too: she won't sleep with him until they're married, explaining: "Charles ... I'm a virgin". That is, in fact, exactly what Charles wants to hear -- he: "loved Rosa more and more, especially now, because of this" -- but, of course, it's also their undoing, because Rosa is anything but a virgin (and given how much she got around, it's hard to believe she doesn't realize that there is no way Charles wouldn't find out).
       The novel spirals to its dark end. Kezilahabi notes that: "Calamity ensued, calamity after calamity", and he is not kidding. Charles doesn't act very well either, but the fates certainly conspire to see the worst befall Rosa's entire family, with greedy, ghoulish relatives making sure that when all is said and done there's nothing left of the household, taking even the cow-manure from the surviving children ..... (Charles' resigned fate is at least more peaceful, but doesn't seem like a happy one either -- not when: "He had been unable to find a virgin, even though a virgin was what he craved".)
       The moral Kezilahabi offers is about the need, in this day and age (1971, when the book was published), to give children -- daughters, in particular -- more space, and to allow them to unfold more freely:
     The life of a human is like a tree. A tree needs water, air, and light. If a tree is denied ample light by the trees around it, it grows taller. It tries to surpass the trees nearby, so it can get to the light. Zakaria denied his daughters light when they need it most. He hit them; he prohibited them from talking to boys. [...] The world is changing, however; we are the ones changing it. Let us agree, finally, that the days of locking our daughters inside and anointing them with oil are over. Ours is not a world to be told about, as in "The world is like this and like that." Ours is a world to go out into, as in see, decide, act.
       At times abrupt, and rarely lingering over the characters and their actions, Rosa Mistika is a somewhat rough narrative, but its portraits are nevertheless effective, and many of the scenes well-rendered. Kezilahabi tends a bit much to quick extremes -- including, for good measure, a devastating sickness that spreads quickly throughout northern Tanzania and on Ukerewe ("In nearly every hamlet, villagers mourned the loss of three or four people each month") -- but that also makes for a packed and quick-moving novel.
       While Zakaria's parenting -- and pretty much everything else about him -- should certainly be condemned, the failure of adult- or mature guidance is a general one, including from the authority figures at Rosa's schools: everyone just wants something, and is fine with forcing or manipulating Rosa into giving it up. Well-meaning Regina tries -- so also in reaching out in a letter, addressed: 'For Roza' (and looking: "as if it had been written by someone who attended adult education classes, the kind that met under a tree") -- but, with so many other children and as the main money-earner in the family, is of little help or influence; the fact that she can't break free of Zakaria -- even in the final instance -- is already bad enough.
       Somewhat unpolished -- and very dark in its resolution --, Rosa Mistika is nevertheless more than just an interesting novel of its time and place, and it is good to see it available in English translation.

- M.A.Orthofer, 25 May 2025

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Links:

Rosa Mistika: Reviews: Other books of interest under review:

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About the Author:

       Tanzanian author Euphrase Kezilahabi lived 1944 to 2020.

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© 2025 the complete review

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