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"Their journey in Milenia had been long and heart-breaking... But how tattered the state of the human heart was. Hey; those appearances. Absurd: White blackness, health sickness, heaven hell... They brayed about a bright future at death point, they wedded on deathbeds...," says the narrator towards the end of The Blissabyss. In The Blissabyss, Andrew Nyongesa attests to the tenet of Sigmund Freud´s psychoanalysis that primordial instincts of sex and destruction dominate human nature. It is therefore fallacious for the hero, Eugene Simiyu, to imagine that he is above these base natures. Even in the best of his times, Eugene exhibits sex instincts in thought; perhaps it is only the Creator with the power to be perfect. The novelist warns the audience to beware as they mock others as the young Eugene does. Life has countless enemies of propriety and virtue; and the first is the evil nature within us then that without. Eugene confronts lust from within and jealousy from without. Eugene has the attributes of a tragic hero; he is gifted but his pride leads to his downfall. He learns that he is no better than Nancie and Wambaka; he is an absurd combination: heavenhell and goodbad.

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Born and educated in Nairobi, Kenya, Andrew Nyongesa is a literary scholar, teacher, poet and novelist. He has a number of published titles to his name: The Water Cycle (2012), Worms in the Lounge (2012), Surmount the Essay World (2012), The Rise of Rodedom (2013), Dissecting Poetry (2014) and The Endless Battle (2016).

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