Barawa and the ways birds fly in the sky: An ethnographic novel

Michael Jackson, anthropologist and poet, has taken as his subject a Kuranko chiefdom in northeastern Sierra Leone. Barawa is the story of the succession of Kuranko chiefs and their families over a sweep of several hundred years. It also tells of the exploits of the first white explorers pursuing their own dreams. From the earliest Islamic invasions and the first contact with Europeans, through two world wars and into modern-day political struggles of Sierra Leone, the history of the area is sensitively recounted through the lives of men and women inextricably tied to their homeland. 

Jackson breaks new ground in ethnographic writing: Barawa includes personal memoir, ethnohistory, imaginative reconstruction, poetry, and detailed ethnographic analysis, all of which balance exacting research with the rich images of fiction. Through a series of striking portraits — African and European alike — Jackson presents a picture of social evolution and a history of colonial penetration of Barawa. In this, he imaginatively explores the links between history and biography.