This book presents important works about the Acholi in Uganda from Frank Knowles Girling’s
The Acholi of Uganda
and Okot p’Bitek’s
The Religion of the Central Lwo, African Religions in Western Scholarship,
and
Acholi Love
in one volume. Girling was writing about the Acholi at the time Okot was a teenager. They were also both introduced to anthropology in England by some of the same people, and they were both outsiders. Girling was a Marxist and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. He was thrown out of Uganda when he invited Indian independence activists to visit him. He was subsequently refused access to the UK anthropology establishment and became a sociologist, studying the working class in Glasgow. Okot was one of the most important of all African poets. His approach to anthropology is polemical and engaging.