ROSA MISTIKA, a novel, translated from the Swahili by Jay Boss Rubin, foreword by Annmarie Drury

155pp., paperback, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2025

ISBN:  9780300276558

First published in 1971. Rosa Mistika, the first-ever Swahili novel to address issues of domestic violence, sexual coercion and abortion, was banned on publication.

When teenage Rosa leaves her village on Ukerewe Island to attend a residential school on the mainland she is initially relieved to escape from her alcoholic father, who abuses his wife and daughters. There, as she begins to explore her sexuality, she has to learn how to survive in a patriarchal society governed by double standards. 

“This cutting-edge translation of a book that has continuously stirred the Swahili literary scene gives us access to a world and contradictions that are rarely available in the West, at a time when we question what is translated, how, and why.” Ida Hadjivayanis, SOAS, University of London

“Carefully and beautifully translated, Rosa Mistika is a profound meditation on how we come to independence as individuals, as women and men steeped in patriarchy, and in societies still wearing neocolonial rags - and then when tasked with freedom, what we do with it.” Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, author of The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Identity, Language and Ownership

Euphrase Kezilahabi (1944–2020) was a celebrated Tanzanian novelist, poet, and scholar. He joined the Faculty of African Languages and Literature at the University of Botswana in 1995, and taught there until just before his death. Rosa Mistika, the first of Kezilahabi's six novels, is the first to be published in full in its English translation.