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Few authors are able to keep their theme running for such a long time as Ngugi has done. As a critic of the post-independence politics of the new wave of African leaders, Ngugi wa Thiong'o knows more about the tricks, chicanery, and shenanigans of these people than most people. He has observed and written about it both in fiction and in essays. His keen interest has always been the lack of socialisation of government efforts and the endemic corruption that has strangulated several African countries, including his home country of Kenya - which had to go through a series of Constitutional reforms after the 2008 electoral crisis - from developing. Ngugi's observations, from the the dawn of independence when the capsule of euphoria burst and evaporated all at once leaving behind a blanket of realities, are encapsulated in his works. From his first novel Weep Not Child  (1964), which studied the hostile relationship between the colonialists and the colonised to Wizard of the Cro...

Cut off My Tongue (StoryMoja, 2009; 80) is a bold collection of poems by Kenyan author who writes under the name Sitawa Namwalie. My first encounter with Namwalie's poems was when I saw her perform this entire set of poems at the Museum in Kampala, Uganda. That performance will live with me for a very long time. I describe Sitawa's poems as bold because of its subject matter. She is not afraid to call a thing by its name. Yet, in been blunt she didn't sacrifice the musicality and artistic requirement of poetry. All these ingredients are present in this excellent anthology. Whether she is writing about the deeply tribalistic nature of her Kenyan compatriots, an issue that isn't peculiar to that country alone and which has been capitalised by politicians to achieve their personal goals, or she is talking about her identity as a Kenyan and an African, Sitawa minces no words and does so brilliantly. Though her writing covers wide subject matters, the common thread we...

Urban Zoning by Billy Kahora is a story that is difficult to place, that is categorise. Not that categorisation is needed to understand a story nor that it is necessary in and of itself. But Kahora has written a story so simple that it becomes complex in a way that is not easily attainable. The story, to me, is different and unique in the sense that it takes one man, tells of his idiosyncracies in an almost surreal manner; or should I say mental, for Billy's protagonist achieves notoriety beyond the realms of the physical. The title itself is proof. In this story, 'Zoning' has nothing to do with apartheid or any form of physical separatism or quarantine; yet, it does. His - that is, Kandle's (the main character's) separatism is from the reality of this harsh world, its troubles and its gloom and doom, through alcohol. Kandle is a man of unique character: though he drinks and gets drunk he is able to control himself from going over the edge; he is a contr...

Set Me Free , published in the Caine Prize for African writing 2010 anthology - A Life in Full and other stories - is a story based on the 2007-2008 Kenya electoral crisis that resulted when Mwai Kibaki was declared winner of the December 27, 2007 elections and Raila Odinga and his supporters claimed there has been electoral fraud leading to a somewhat Orange Revolution but worsened when some politicians invoked the tribal differences leading to violence. The resolution of the crisis led to the Kibaki-Odinga power-sharing government where Odinga became the prime minister and Kibaki remained the president. In this parallel story, narrated by the daughter of one of such rogue politicians whose name is on the list of the names the ICC has released, the woman tells of the events that took place within the next two days when the list came out. When as a temporary single-mother she had to make a lot of life-and-dead decisions amid threatening calls and text messages, and women who all...

This short story is taken from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2010 anthology,  A Life in Full and other stories . David Thuo runs a column in the Sunday News on social issues; actually, he claims to be a consultant on social issues. He is also the head of the Thuo family comprising of his wife, two daughters and a maid. For the first time mother and father quarrelled, the wife was accusing the husband of cheating and the husband was counter-accusing her for sleeping with her boss. The household dynamics seems to be weaker and there is no single bond binding them together. Again, there seems to be great tension among them so that even watching television becomes a platform to inflame passions. The degeneracy of the family is not limited to the parents suspecting each other. Sharon the first child has two boyfriends and shares her time between them. The narrator, the second child, who pretends to be the best member of the household secretly reads a pornographic magazine...

Soul Safari  by Alnoor Amlani, published in the Caine Prize 2010 anthology, is a story about a well-planned but botched marriage proposal between former high-school lovers, Adam and Zara. Adam has carefully planned a Safari trip for his long time high-school who had just a terrible break-up with his boyfriend that required the police to literally uproot him from her apartment. Adam seemed not to have taken the psychological consequences of such a horrible incident into consideration when planning for this romantic adventure. Upon reaching the place the relationship between the two went sour when Adam openly expressed his love for Zara. Zara on her part let it known to him that she loves him too, but only as a sister would love a brother. This statement broke the last string that held them together. Red with jealous and almost annoyed with anyone who dared hold a conversation with Zara that kept him out, the relationship was descending farther and farther into an irremediable...

Slated to be published in March 2012 is Lily Mabura's short story anthology How Shall We Kill the Bishop and other Stories . The title story How Shall We Kill the Bishop  was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010. I read the story but got lost along the way; however, I know of other individuals who loved the story. The challenge is now to revisit this short story and have a second reading. From the Publishers: An artist mourning for a brother who died in Bosnia, a restless young woman alerted to the possibility of life outside her tight knit community, an unemployed lawyer lingering in a Kenyan hospital - Lily Mabura's first collection of short stories deals with characters whose fates fascinates and alarm.  Set in Kenya, the USA, Namibia and the Congo, these brief, evocative tales demonstrate an acute sensitivity to the globalised trajectories which increasingly distinguished our world. One of Kenya's most promising authors, Lily M...

Title: A Grain of Wheat Author: Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo Genre: Fiction/Colonial Literature Publishers: Heinemann (AWS Classics) Pages: 267 Year of First Publication: 1967 Country: Kenya A Grain of Wheat has been noted as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's best novel. It was voted as one of the Best 100 African Books in the Twentieth Century by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. As the third published novel, A Grain of Wheat embodies distillates from Ngũgĩ's two previous novels: Weep Not Child (1964) and The River Between (1965). In this story, the fight for independence, started in Weep not Child and The River Between converges and hints of elitism, greed, and discrimination against the independence fighters that blossomed into the novel Matigari had just begun.  Mugo wa Kibiro's prophecy (in TRB) that 'there shall come a people with clothes like butterflies' had come to pass and Waiyaki - the protagonist in TRB - is reported to have been 'buried aliv...

Lily Mabura's How Shall we Kill the Bishop  was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010 . The story was first published in Wasafiri Vol. 23 No. 1, March 2008 . It is also part of the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology A Life in Full and Other Stories  published in 2010, together with Alex Smith's Soulmates . How Shall we Kill the Bishop  is a story about the lives of four priests, a bishop and a cook at a vicarage in a desolate town in Kenya. In fact the author's description of the town where the vicarage is set is similar to Andre Brink 's Praying Mantis . For instance the military base was a remnant of the colonial legacy standing amongst stunted acacia trees and withered shrubs of solanum. The stunts of sparse grass surrounding the base were too brittle for cattle to graze on - too brittle even for camels.  and it is this military that provides the  distraction from the sick dogs that would not stop howling, from t...

Mukoma Wa Ngugui's How Kamau Wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile  was shortlisted for the 10th Caine Prize award in 2009 . It is the fourth in the list of five shortlist to be reviewed here. The itself was published in Wasafiri Volume 23, No. 2 in June 2008. Kamau is a member of the Second Independence Democracy with Content Forum (SIDCF), a group that has been asking questions of their dictatorial government. He has been arrested and tortured on several occasions and has become immune to the fear exuded by military officials. One evening Kamau was visited by an army officer who presented him with a list of people who should be on the run, in case an impending insurrection fail: 'I ... we do not want to see more people dead. Especially the young people and even though we anticipate more trouble from the likes of you, you professional agitators, this is our country and your needed. Protect yourselves and your friends. We shall deal with each other later. Like men ... eye to e...

Parselelo Kantai's You Wreck Her  was shortlisted for the 10th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009 . The story appeared in Issue 2 of St. Petersburg Review . Parselelo's  You Wreck Her covers a lot of issues in a few pages, from human trafficking to prostitution and fraud. Right from the beginning the reader is confronted with a sleazy sexual encounter between our character who is a malaya (prostitute) and an mzungu  (light-skin tourist). You do not know how far you have fallen down in this world until you see yourself crawling up a karao's  face on a Friday night. You are slobbering and gagging over your short-time, ignoring the after-taste of condom coming into your nostrils from the back of your throat, like Goort's coffee bubbling in the machine on a Sunday morning a long time ago. You lather and stroke. Your head bobs like a bar of soap in bathwater. You can feel he is getting close. There is a commotion far away, beyond the squeak of rubber ...

Title: The River Between Author:  Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo Genre: Fiction/Social Realism Publishers: Heinemann (African Writers Series) Pages: 152 Year of First Publication: 1965 Country: Kenya For the Africa Reading Challenge The River Between is a story about leadership, changes and identity. It concentrates on social and political change at the onset of European invasion. As a colonial literature the story is set in the period where the Kikuyu highlands of Kameno and Makuyu was at its nascent stage of Christian European invasion. Though similar to Weep Not Child , the struggle in The River Between against Christian European revolves around the issue of tradition and identity. The story opens with an omniscient narrator who tells of Kikuyu creation; of how Murungu created Gikuyu and Mumbi, the first man and woman. The narrator also debates which ridge is the eldest: Makuyu - where it is claimed that Gikuyu and Mumbi sojourned with Murungu on their way to Mu...

Title: Weep Not, Child Author: Ngugi wa Thiong'o Genre: Fiction/Colonial Publishers: Heinemann Pages: 143 Year of First Publication: 1964 Country: Kenya For the Africa Reading Challenge To begin with, this is a book I last read almost seven years ago. It is also one of the very few books I have re-read. Though I only review books I have just (within the year) read I feel the need to share this with you. The story revolves around Ngotho and his children and their relationship with Jacobo and the Howlands. Ngotho was a man filled with emotions and loneliness. The type of emotion one cannot do anything to assuage its excruciating pains. As a patriarch Ngotho hurts from the knowledge that even though his children show great potential he cannot help them to fulfill. Worst of all is his inability to stand against Jacobo, the anglicised local man for whom he works. And when he remembers that his son, Boro, fought in the second Big War, his impotence becomes hurti...

Title: Matigari Author: Ngugi wa Thiong'o Translator: Wangui wa Goro Genre: Fiction (Satire) Pages: 175 Publishers: Heinemann (African Writers Series) Year of Publication: in Gikuyu, 1986, (in English 1987) It was my first attempt at writing this review that led to my article on Precolonial and Post-Colonial African Literature . Ngugi's novel, Matigari, is one that is funny along all lines and at several levels. Just after independence, Africa's faithful literati realised the path along which the new governments were taken the country. They foresaw that such a path portends nothing but doom and so decided to speak against it. One of such prolific writers against the system in Kenya and because of the ubiquitousness of the atrocities on the continent for that matter Africa, was Ngugi wa Thiong'o. In Matigari, Ngugi wa Thiong'o created a fictional hero Matigari ma Njiruungi (this in Gikuyu means 'the patriots who survived the bullets'). M...