Peter K. Palangyo

Who is Peter K. Palangyo?

Peter K. Palangyo was a Tanzanian novelist and dipolomat. His reputation rests on a single novel, Dying in the Sun, "considered by many to be one of the most compelling works of modernism in African writing from this period."

Born in Arusha, Palangyo was educated locally, in Uganda and the United States, where he majored in biology at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and went on to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. Abandoning the sciences for literature, he took a diploma of education from Makerere University College and taught in several secondary schools. In 1968 he returned to the United States to join the writers' workshop at the University of Iowa, and gained an MFA in creative writing. Returning to Tanzania in 1972, he taught at the University of Dar es Salaam before joining the diplomatic service. At one point he was Tanzania's Ambassador to France." In 1980 he gained a PhD from University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, with a thesis on Chinua Achebe.

Palangyo died in a car accident in 1993."