Dalrymple’s 1989 book Filosofa’s Republic, originally published under the pseudonym Thursday Msigwa, has just been re-published in a second edition under the Dalrymple name. The book has been out of print for many years, and even used copies have been hard to locate online.

Filosofa’s Republic is a humorous satire of Tanzania under the rule of Julius Nyerere and is based on Dalrymple’s personal experiences living and working in a remote village in Tanzania for two years. The book pokes fun at a variety of vivid characters: the fictional dictator and his local party apparatchik, whose somewhat flexible left-wing political principles are really just an excuse for power and riches; a Western missionary with an ostensibly different doctrine but who may be seen in much the same light; and the local villagers who mostly ignore these doctrines and struggle to get out of their own way in their daily lives. (We wrote a longer summary of the book here many years ago.)

Although much of the story is based on real-life events that Dalrymple has described in his essays (like Not As Black As It’s Painted), I think it is still fair to call this his first fictional work, and insofar as it satirizes socialist thought and exemplifies it in one small community, you might say this is his Animal Farm. It is not the tragedy that that work is though: it’s clear that Dalrymple is charmed by these people (except for the missionary, perhaps), and the overall tone of the book is light. I had forgotten how enjoyable this book is.

It is available on all Amazon sites worldwide: here in the UK and here in the US.