Stranger in His Homeland

"When a writer of tragic as well as comic genius combines both in the same work, it can make very interesting reading. Linus Asong has attained that rare melange in Stranger in His Homeland. His fabulous humour comes to the fore, so too does his somber tragedy and his breathless suspense. If this novel takes us back chronologically, it also takes us forward up the ladder of mature craftmanship.... The central action of this novel is the tragic encounter between Antony's complex character and a social and cultural milieu in which that character cannot truly exist with itself."-Professor Richard Bjornson, Ohio State University

Stranger in His Homeland completes the long-awaited trilogy of Linus Asong's fictitious village of Nkokonoko Small Monje, separately treated in The Crown of Thorns and its sequel A Legend of the Dead. However, it leads us back not to events after A Legend of the Dead, but to the crisis that created the passionately exciting The Crown of Thorns. Honest, enthusiastic, arrogant and self-righteous, Antony Nkoaleck, the first graduate of his tribe means well. But his society, entrenched in corruption, sees things differently and therefore judges him according to its own norms. Just one or two errors on Antony's part are enough to cost him his job with the government, the coveted throne of Nkokonoko Small Monje, and finally his life. It is a sad story, strongly reminiscent of Myshkin's fate in Dostoevysky's novel The Idiot, a story in which the Russian novelist vividly shows the inability of any man to bear the burden of moral perfection in an imperfect world.