Review by Frank Plowright

Operation Legacy is an anthology adapting stories by Ethiopian writer Haddis Alemayehu and eventually freed 18th century African slave Olaudah Equiano, packaged with an accounting of Britain’s appalling occupation of Kenya. It begins with a five page introduction talking of how the content destroys intellectual categories and boundaries that leads into a list of thanks and credits so comprehensive it would shame the most voluble Oscar winning speech. Why? Why not let readers enjoy the stories rather than surrounding them with a weight and pomposity? If extra contextualisation is required, an afterword would suffice. The entire tone is phenomenally off-putting, and yet even so, there’s no clarity as to who actually wrote the stories in their comics form. It may be editors Trevor R. Getz and Audra A. Diptée, but this is by no means clear.

All of which is a terrible shame, as the stories themselves are good, shine a light into some very dark corners and reveal information that needs to be in the wider public domain.

‘When Satiety Marries Avarice, Hunger is Born’ adapts Alemayehu’s damning allegorical indictment of colonialism, presenting cats claiming to have an advanced way of life and the inhabitants of Mouseland being told they could achieve the same with guidance. There’s a sinister undertone even in what appears a happy welcome, well brought out by Fanuel Leul’s dark art. It’s a powerful parable, and a translation of the text version is supplied after the story.

The book title is the name applied to official British policy in occupied lands, of removing and concealing documentation to be able to present a biased historical picture. Of all countries striving for independence from British occupation, the bloodiest repression occurred in Kenya from the 1950s, and a partial history is presented as a lecture by Diptée. As is unfortunately so often the case, the British pioneered techniques still used today. There’s little difference between their expanding settlements occupied in Kenya and what Israel is currently doing in the West Bank, for instance. It’s clearly drawn by Liz Clarke, but the lecture format is awkward and unnecessary when a stronger narrative with greater detail could have been arranged without it. It nevertheless spotlights atrocities still not widely known and impacting on countless lives.

Clarke also illustrates the life story of Gustavus Vassa, later known by the name of Olaudah Equiano. It’s remarkable, drawing heavily from Vassa’s autobiography, published in 1789. This was controversial at the time, drawing accusations of being fictional polemic to generate opposition to the slave trade, and the approach taken by Getz is to supply counterpoints and explanations as if an annotated document. It’s another awkward method of telling a story. Clarke, though, embraces the text, providing matching illustrations to Vassa seeing oppressors as evil spirits.

Operation Legacy supplies engaging historical material clearly and attractively drawn, but very much hampered by storytelling choices. The excess contextualisation and the tone of it presents as a desperate striving for academic credibility prioritised over consideration for readers. The advice is to ignore everything else before reading the stories, and only then investigate the text. This could have been so much better.