Suzi Feay

Dr Livingstone becomes a dead weight : Out of Darkness, Shining Light, by Petina Gappah

The problems of ferrying the explorer’s body to the East African coast, en route to Britain, is the subject of Gappah’s quirky new novel

issue 22 February 2020

The scope of Petina Gappah’s impressive novel is laid out in the prologue: the death of the Victorian explorer David Livingstone and the ferrying of his desiccated body by loyal servants to the East African coast, so it could be returned in glory to his native Britain. A passage in Herodotus sent Livingstone on a fruitless search for four mythical fountains which he believed were the source of the Nile. Out of Darkness, Shining Light restores the identities, personalities and passions of his unruly household, whose funerary quest is carried out with a courage and sense of honour that aligns them with classical heroes rather than servants. They even cry ‘The sea, the sea!’ on reaching their goal, the town of Bagamoyo.


The narrative is shared unequally (in a tale that has much to say about inequality) between Halima, Livingstone’s gossipy cook, and Jacob Wainwright, an earnest Christian convert much given to Biblical quotation and exhortation.

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