Two Thousand Seasons

Trans Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973) in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as "predators," "destroyers," and "zombies". The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering, prophesying a new age.Set in the era of European slave raiding wars in Africa, known to Europeans as The Enlightenment, the narrative centers on a group of adolescent friends tricked and sold by an African king to European slavers. On the trans-Atlantic voyage, the group organizes a successful shipboard revolt, then returns to the continent to begin the work of their lives — organizing to end the rule of injustice established by European invaders and their African collaborators.