“The ground was scarred by fire. My father came to us with his leopard-skin torn and his ostrich plumes bent and broken, snatching up my brother and gripping me by the hand, taking cover in the glare of the flames. Our land was devastated, warriors slain, women and children carried into captivity, yoked like cattle…“
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Born in what is now South Sudan, Macar Cithiec (Hatashil Masha Kathish) was taken in slavery as a boy and sold, as he wrote, “for six yards of calico”. Escaping captivity in the 1870s, he became one of the first from the south of Sudan to travel to Europe, taking the baptismal name Salim Wilson, and working as a Christian missionary and preacher in the north of England. He died in 1946. His autobiography, first published in 1933, is a testimony of human survival, a noteworthy document in the history of slavery and colonialism in eastern Africa. Republished for the first time with maps, a glossary, and a new introduction by John Ryle and Joseph Diing Majok.
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