[Petals of Blood] announces its radical political intention in the author's choices of sectional epigraphs: from Walt Whitman, William Blake and Amilcar Cabral, among other poets. It's a willfully diagrammatic and didactic novel which also succeeds artistically because of its resonant characterization and deadly irony. It satisfies both the novelist's political intent and the obligation I know he feels toward his art….
[The novel shows] the workers at the overseas-owned Theng'eta Brewery in Ilmorog, a new town near the Trans-Africa Highway,… planning a militant strike, after the directors' meeting declared a no pay-raise decision; hours later three Theng'eta directors are found burnt to death; three townspeople are arrested….
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