Osiris Rising: A Novel of Africa Past, Present and Future is a novel written by Ayi Kwei Armah and published in 1995. The story revolves around an African-American woman, Ast, who goes to Africa looking for heritage after she gets her PhD. The text addresses a number of contemporary African issues, including the residual colonial institutions that limit African culture, the hypocritical nature of African Americans and expatriates who try to help Africa and the contemplation of "What is African history and culture?" The book is published by Per Ankh, a Senegalese publishing company.

Characters

Many of Osiris Rising's characters appear one-dimensional and ludicrous, almost "puppet-like". Ast, the main character, seems the most credible and developed among the characters, yet even her psychology in the interactions with Seth can become absurd. At best the characters, act as principles representing further exploration of the book's themes. The following are the book's main characters:

Setting

Armah sets the story in a contemporary unnamed West African country. A majority of the story takes place on the campus of Manda's Teachers' College, where Asar and Ast both teach and many of their agendas come to fruition.

Thematic elements

As the title implies, Armah transposes the ancient Egyptian Osiris myth into modern Africa. This first becomes evident when Armah names each chapter using Egyptian words. The main characters closely align with the major movers of the myth: the reforming Asar identifying with Osiris, Asar's companion, Ast, portrayed as Isis, and Soya representing Set. The relationship between Ast and Asar reflects a Pan-African model of uniting both the African American with no ethnic tribe and the native African who clearly identifies with a single village. This represents a similar relationship to that between an Afro-Caribbean man and an African women in Armah's novel Fragments. This relationship, one of love and commitment that works fervently for the emancipation of African thought, helps reinforce Armah's message of pan-African cooperation. Armah presents a very critical view of the character Sheldon Tubman. He portrays this character, a strong civil-rights activist in the state, as nothing more than a "Diaspora Hustler" - someone who makes a big deal of returning to the African tradition but instead uses this fake "tradition" to benefit himself. Anne Adams, in her comparison of the two authors' repertoires in "Literary Pan-Africanism", identifies this as a position also strongly expressed by Guadeloupean Maryse Condé.

Critical reception

Osiris Rising has been reviewed by a handful of world literature scholars in institutions that provide a western education:

Book sources