Juggling Truths
Unity Dow’s third novel, Juggling Truths portrays the childhood of Monei Ntuka in the Botswanan village of Mochudi in Africa. Go to the past with me, so you can take the past to the future, asks her Nkoko. Nei takes us on an extraordinary journey through the many truths that shape her life; the truths of the colonisers and their churches and of her own people. We travel with her through dreams and share the wisdom of her grandmother as she lets the never-ending stories weave their own reality in face of a universe of conflicting truths. Unity Dow recreates with telling insight and gentle humour a world where the truths of the missionaries and the witchdoctors jostle with those of the generations of women.
2003 | ISBN 9781876756383 | Paperback | 216 x 140 mm | 173 pp
Awards
2006 Finalist, Percy Fitzpatrick Prize for Children's Literature
Reviews
‘Dow is both a member of the establishment and, through her fiction, its trenchant critic ... a truly outstanding novelist; the character development is exiguous.’
–Elizabeth Isicheri, NZ Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Otago
‘Unity Dow's novels are always more than just stories, and while her legal background informs her perception it does not weigh down her prose, which is vivid, lyrical and sometimes wickedly funny.’
–Juliette Hughes, The Age
‘Juggling Truths is a beautifully written novel from the remarkable Unity Dow, a judge of the High Court of Botswana. As in her previous novels, Dow continues the theme of the tension between the old and new ways. Juggling Truths’ protagonist Monei manages to juggle the disjunctive realities of being the fifth of six children of a semi-nomadic farming family, and of being a colonial subject. Fortunate to go to school at age seven, she splits her life between school/village and family/home, trying to determine what is true in the often-conflicting stories she hears from members of her family, or in churches or in school.'
–Keren Lavelle, Good Reading Magazine
‘Guileless yet clever, courageous and fiercely concerned for justice.’
–Debra Adelaide, The Sydney Morning Herald