The God Who Begat a Jackal
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The God who begat a Jackal is a novel by Nega Mezlekia, an Ethopian writer. The novel set in the 17th-century feudal system, vassal uprisings, religious mythology, and the Crusades intertwined with the love between Aster, the daughter of a feudal lord, and Gudu, the court jester and family slave. Their relationship is an ultimate taboo.
Quotes
[edit]- It is the stale breath of Death on his open and vulnerable neck that immortalizes the hero, that lends a fireside story its luster.
- Aster had come to trust the diviner implicitly. The lessons had burned such an indelible mark in her memory that she could recount, with the utmost ease, all twenty-three creatures that had fallen from the grace of God, and the nine ethnic groups that the Almighty had meant to be slaves.
- She accepted that one shall not kill one's neighbor, unless it is to encourage others to do the same; one shall not steal, unless one can prove oneself lord-designate; and one shall show deference to an elder, unless it is decidedly evident that the elder is from one of the nine fallen ethnic groups.
- Land was to the nomads what a deity is to the initiated: one may draw on its might, but not lay claim to it. Amma herdsmen roamed the vast steppe at will in search of a green pasture and watering hole, with little regard for man-made boundaries.
- They questioned why a settled society should behave any differently, why one man should toil in the service of another merely because the stronger had staked out something that had never belonged to him in the first place.
- “Though the uprising had freed the vassals from any obligations they might have had to their former masters, it had yet to profit them. In fact, as the villagers had to man their new borders, build their own prisons, police their markets, and look after the judges they appointed, the amount of money that went to communal use steadily increased.
- Though many brave men had sought him out in times of pressing need, the war patriarch had failed to earn their affection. A few of the people he had so diligently served had conspired to put him out of service in the most hideous ways.