Zanzibar
reviewer Oliver Barrett

The story of the East African slave trade is often overshadowed by its West African counterpart and the Atlantic triangle.

Yoland Brown’s ‘Zanzibar’, inspired by letters written by the countries first mission nurse, Shropshire born May Allen, found during her childhood in Zanzibar’s Royston-XI-Towns explores the East African slave trade from a refreshing perspective.

Rather than simply recanting the horrific trade of East Africans to the Arabian, French, Dutch and American colonies, Brown successfully embroiders the themes of slavery with the history of the country and the events which centred on the Universities Mission to Central Africa and its role in the abolition of Zanzibar’s commercial slave trade in 1873.

The marriage of Brown’s unflinching attention to detail and her balance of the personal and historical events of the period grants Zanzibar a distinct role in this darkest period in African history.

Yoland Brown
Eleventowns Publishing