Daniel Osaye

The principal character in the book, "Fortune favors the bold", is a polygamous, heartless African man, although socially respected and perceived as cursed as a result of an unexpected bad turn on events.

The protagonist, Asweda, faces severe physical injuries while looking for a midwife to assist his wife to deliver. He becomes an embarrassment to society when his wife gives birth to a male child who turns out to be a product of infidelity. He struggles to cover up the shame and, in the process, breaks the laid down society norms, an act which angered the ancestors, marking the onset and manifestation of a curse in his life. His family is very affected by drought, hunger, and famine. He struggles to sire a male child.

Asweda, being a romantic man, marries up to four wives, one of whom turns out to be a night runner and a magician.

On a migration mission, Asweda loses all his wealth to thieves, his gardener is killed, and his child becomes critically sick. He heartlessly butchered one of the thieves on a defense mission. Asweda makes a hard decision to bury his gardener in a strange foreign bushland, and later haunts him and demands to be buried in ancestral land.

Asweda ignores the cleansing ceremony, which comes along with serious consequences. The now poor African man plots a rustling exercise in an attempt to gain wealth, killing an 'Oromo' man, in the process running away with a large number of cattle. The Oromo men attacked him on a revenge mission, chopping off his leg and throwing him in a cave where he spent quite some time eating rats for survival.

The African polygamous man later reunites with the family, only to find all his wives have already inherited. He struggled to regain his wives. Asweda sires a son at his old age. Twelve years later, he blesses his son Obulala and then dies, partially satisfied. His brother, Ocholi, also died mysteriously. Betrayal, cunningness, wealth, and poverty manifest in Asweda's lineage.

THE FAMILY BURDEN