Majok Tulba grew up in the Christian village of Pacong, in southern Sudan. The family lived in a mud hut village, where they raised goats and cattle, and grew grain. When Tulba was around eight, rebel soldiers came to the village to recruit men and boys for their fight against the government. Tulba's father was taken.
Later, when government troops attacked the village, Tulba was forced to flee with his brother Makur. They ended up in a refugee camp near the Ugandan border, and lived in camps until Tulba was about fifteen. At that time, he and his brother were contacted by their uncle, who had been brought to Sydney under the humanitarian refugee campaign, and who arranged for them to join him. They arrived in 2001. Tulba has not seen or heard of either of his parents again.
Tulba was enrolled in the Catholic Intensive English Centre in Lewisham. At that time, he could not read or write in his native language, Dinka, much less read and write English. Interested in films, he went to the International Film School to study filmmaking in 2005. A short film,
Burst, that he worked on made the finals of TropFest in 2006.
He worked as a Sudanese liaison officer at Mary McKillop College in Wakeley, western Sydney, and wrote stories to help himself learn English. He entered a manuscript he was working on in the 2011 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Though it did not win a prize, he was awarded a $7000 CAL Western Sydney Writers' fellowship which helped him complete his novel, now published as
Beneath the Darkening Sky.
He lives in Sydney.
Source:
'Majok's Story'
Beneath the Darkening Sky
Camberwell
:
Hamish Hamilton
,
2012
Z1871105
2012
single work
novel
When the rebels come to Obinna's village, they do more than wreak terror for one night. Lining the children up in the middle of the village, they measure them against the height of an AK-47. Those who are shorter than the gun are left behind. Those who are taller are taken. Obinna and his older brother Akot find themselves the rebel army's newest recruits. But while Akot almost willingly surrenders to the training, Obinna resists, determined not to be warped by the revolution's slogans and violence. In the face of his vicious captain's determination to break him, Obinna finds help in a soldier called Priest, and in the power of his own dreams. Beneath the Darkening Sky describes a life unimaginably different from our own, but one that is the experience of tens of thousands of child soldiers. Uncompromising, vivid and raw, it is an astonishing portrait of a mind trying to make sense of a senseless world' (Publisher website).