Description

About the author

Matthew Uzukwu is an author, screenplay writer, film maker, and an adjunct professor. He lives in the Washington DC area.

About the book

Osak is the dashing young African who moves to America to further his education. He graduates, starts a career and marries Ingrid, his college sweetheart who is white. Ingrid gives birth to a baby girl. Osak, prince and heir to the throne of his hometown where his father is king, comes under pressure to bring the baby home to Africa for circumcision. Osak resists because he abhors female genital mutilation. He also thinks Ingrid would be horrified if she learned about what his parents wanted him to do. Osak’s parents had consulted an oracle which revealed that the baby was the reincarnate of the matriarch of their hometown, a woman named Uwa. The royal family was thus obligated by culture and tradition to carry out the circumcision and a reincarnation rite for the baby. Osak still resists until strange things begin to happen to him. A nine feet tall and wrinkled old lady appears in his dreams several times, the same woman appears in the bathroom mirror during a shave, and the baby girl becomes chronically ill, going in and out of hospitals. Osak’s father had warned him of these repercussions if he failed to comply with what their culture demanded of him to do. Osak could lose Ingrid, who would certainly oppose the circumcision and even divorce him over it, or risk losing the baby whom the wrinkled old lady had told Osak was her reincarnate. The ancestral realm, she had warned Osak in a dream, demanded that the circumcision and the reincarnation rite be done for the baby to live. Osak’s decision on what to do is a tough one.