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The making of a phenomenal black woman

Title: Finding Me

Author: Viola Davis

Publisher: HarperCollins

Reviewer: Scholastica Moraa

Viola Davis. The woman who set our screens on fire with her act in ‘The Woman King’. Picking this book was a search for who she is, for who she became; for the intricate pieces of what makes this phenomenal black woman.

Finding Me is a biography of one woman’s search for who she is. That eight-year-old girl, who kept running until she decided to run no more. Without holding anything back she shows us her family, in all its ugly, delicate and awfully beautiful edges. I fell in love with MaMama – her mother ‘with the -and stuff like that in tha’.

I honestly think no words can bring out the rawness with which Viola Davis brought out her story.  She fought so many demons her pain and shame are palpable. For people who cry easily, this can make you cry. Her violent father, the utter poverty… the struggle. But then these kids dreamt their pain away.

Viola Davis’ story is not the typical caterpillar that morphed into a butterfly. But rather a butterfly that never really knew how beautiful it was.

From a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, this little girl clawed her way to the stage in New York City and beyond. From a girl struggling with bedwetting, running from bullies and being totally unrecognised, Viola has risen to become a household name. A woman we look up to. Someone black girls want to be. It is raw how she says that people did not expect someone who looked like her to take leading roles… but she did and excelled at it. Once she stopped running, once she went down on her knees, her prayers were answered. Some took longer than she expected; but they were answered.

Anyone would have understood if she had given up. But this woman did not. She rose to win several awards including an Oscar and graced our screens with her talent. An inspiration to any little girl who dares to dream. That it doesn’t matter where you start from. It doesn’t matter the odds stacked against you. You will get where you need to.

I totally recommend this read. A million times.

Moraa is a young woman navigating life. Author of Beautiful Mess… Co Author of Dreams and Demons and I’m Listening 2021 edition. She is also the winner of Kendeka Prize of African Literature-2022. She can be found with a book or two. When she’s not fighting to stay afloat, she is daydreaming, writing poetry or reading.

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Books Fiction Reviews

Americanah through the eye of a geographer

Title: Americanah

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Reviewer: Kelvin J. Shachile

Unlike Half of a Yellow Sun that made her cry, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes her third novel Americanah as a book that made her laugh. Published in 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf, the voluminous text is a book that made me think. Right from its opening, Americanah displayed an appreciation of spatial variations; a core concept in geography.  The understanding of how both physical and human environments are different across places. The book that has been reviewed by many as one of the most powerful love stories ever written, Chimamanda doesn’t give us a fairytale thought regarding the magic that love can create, but invites serious debates regarding the underlying human experiences and cultural differences that most of the time is shielded from us in some romance stories. Fiction, I have always believed was invented to give us the platform to retell life’s experiences and not just entertain.

Spanning decades, right from the times of military dictatorship in Nigeria to a new democratic country, Chimamanda serves us the human experiences of innocence, love, privilege, dissatisfaction, immigration, disappointments, re-invention, success and reunion. The story is the life journey of Ifemelu, a strong spirited young Nigerian who moves to the United States for her University education but meets a new life upon the realization that she is not just a person; she is a black person and in her later writings on her blog, narrates what it means to hold that label. The book also carries the story of her lover, Obinze who tries his luck to get a visa to the US but fails. He lands in the UK and has the experience of his own as an undocumented immigrant.

Chimamanda carries us from a campus in Nigeria to the US and UK at the same time with fine details that introduce the readers to a critical task of having a keen scrutiny regarding the environments of these spaces. Reading Americanah wasn’t only a journey into understanding the politics of black hair, identity and immigration. It was a reintroduction to the fictional approach of learning and teaching social, cultural and political geography. Chimamanda doesn’t spare the truth regarding what poverty looks like in both Africa and United States. Privilege and social classes are defined. The crossing of borders, transnational encounters and misconceptions of abroad re-initiated in me the eagerness of determining truth and stereotypes and the need for offering clarity regarding locations and spaces while learning and teaching globalization.

I have felt, on so many occasions that Chimamanda writing Americanah was a task of passion and intention; to clarify the narratives of spaces. In one of the classes while discussing about ‘Minorities in Senior Countries’, Americanah became a reference text regarding opportunities and limitations for people from still developing countries who flee home in search for better lives in countries that are considered more developed; regardless of the outcome story, we should all appreciate the existing truth that dominates this text, we should endeavor to teach honest and deep critical aspects of socio-cultural geographies of the world with appreciation of how real human experiences should be made central.

Kelvin J. Shachile is a Kenyan writer. Co-author of Hell in the Backyard and Other stories. Kelvin has been published in anthologies including The Best New African Poets 2018 anthology, The Country of Broken Boys Anthology, The Armageddon and other stories and in Agbowo’, Mwangaza, Kalahari Review, Writers Space Africa and elsewhere.  He holds a B.A from Maasai Mara University and currently pursuing his M.A at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. He was Longlisted for the 2019 African Writers Awards-Children’s literature Category and shortlisted for Wakini Kuria Award for Children’s literature.

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Books Fiction Reviews

Revenge and rejection in Dawood’s thriller

Title: Eye of the Storm

Author: Yusuf Dawood

Publisher: East African Educational Publishers

Reviewer: Otieno Opondo

Eye of the Storm is a captivating medical thriller novel authored by Yusuf K. Dawood, a renowned surgeon and columnist, who died in January, 2023. Set in the post-colonial era, the book delves into the themes of revenge and rejection and the devastating psychological impact they have on individuals.

The novel follows the journey of Njoroge Maina, also known as Joe Maina, from his humble beginnings at the foot of Mount Kenya to the peak of his medical career as a respected surgeon. Haunted by past rejection, Dr Maina seeks revenge and uses his surgical prowess to harm his patients, leaving them either dead or scarred for life. However, justice eventually catches up with him, and the ensuing legal drama is both thrilling and shocking.

As a reader who used to avidly follow Dawood’s column, Surgeon’s Diary, I found Eye of the Storm to be nostalgic, taking me back to the days when I eagerly awaited each new edition of Sunday Nation. The book also has strong autobiographical elements, with Dr Joe Maina being a fictionalized representation of Dawood’s childhood, education, and profession.

The plot of the book starts off slowly but gains momentum and keeps the reader hooked throughout. The characters are well-developed, and the themes explored are relevant to all. Dawood has also demystified the medical profession and surgery, making the book readable to both medical professionals and laymen. However, some readers may find the medical terminologies overwhelming.

In comparison to Dawood’s other novel, The Price of Living, which also deals with the theme of rejection, the author uses the same name for the protagonists in both books, Maina Karanja in The Price of Living and Njoroge Maina in Eye of the Storm. Both protagonists also have sons with the same name, Muhoho, which some readers may find lacking in creativity.

Overall, Eye of the Storm is an excellent read for anyone interested in a medical thriller novel. Dawood seamlessly blends medical terminology with regular English, making the book appealing to all. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how suppressed emotions can have severe consequences.

I highly recommend it, and I give it four stars.

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Books Culture Featured Fiction Issues Reviews

The tear-jerking experiences of a child bride

Title: The Girl with the Louding Voice

Author: Abi Dare

Publisher: Sceptre (UK)

Reviewer: Cynthia Abdallah

It is not enough that the main character Adunni will tug at your heartstrings and make you sympathize with the plight of the girl child in the novel, The Girl with the Louding Voice. Her father’s decision to marry her off to an old man in the village emphasizes the need to fight for the girl child who is vulnerable in a patriarchal society.

Adunni’s dreams of becoming a lawyer are hindered by her father’s poverty and mother’s demise and she is married off to an old man with 2 wives.

That Adunni is 14 years old does not deter the man who already cannot take care of his two wives from pushing for the young wife to give him a baby.

The broken English serves to enhance the innocence of this girl who only wants to have a louding voice.

Her singing and close relationship with her brother Kayus will tug at your heart and make you shed a tear for Adunni and especially for her brother.

The family unit is slowly disintegrating and the children again are at the centre of it.

Adunni is running away leaving her heartbroken brother behind and an enraged village pining for her blood.

Khadija is dead, Iya is dying, a slow painful death and Labake is going mad.

Despite the challenges that Adunni faces, she continues to fight and has a good sense of humor that makes you root for her all the way in the novel.

Get your copy!

About the author

Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and has lived in the UK for eighteen years. She studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and has an M.Sc. in International Project Management from Glasgow Caledonian University as well as an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University of London. The Girl with the Louding Voice won The Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts in 2018 and was also selected as a finalist in 2018 The Literary Consultancy Pen Factor competition. Abi lives in Essex with her husband and two daughters, who inspired her to write her debut novel.

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Books Featured Fiction Reviews

Kombani impresses in his latest offering

Title: Hawkers-Pokers

Author: Kinyanjui Kombani

Publisher: Longhorn

Reviewer: Mbugua Ngunjiri

Kinyanjui Kombani is back, this time with a thriller, whose twists and turns will keep the reader glued to the book’s pages till the very end.

The story is told through the eyes of Rocky Ada (Rada), hawker, who is the eyes (riitho) of fellow hawkers going about their business in the streets of Nairobi. To understand why a riitho is an important person in the hawkers’ universe, one only needs to reflect on the cat and mouse, often street battles between hawkers and City Inspectorate Enforcement Officers (Kanjo askaris), which can and routinely turns fatal.

Now, it is the duty of Rada and two other sentries to be on the lookout and warn fellow hawkers of any impending raid by the deadly Kanjo.

One day, while playing his usual cat and mouse games with Kanjo, Rada rescues a man he finds unconscious in a storm drain. Turns out that this man, Mike Thumbi, son of one the richest men in Nairobi, had a near-fatal encounter with the infamous mchele (drugging) babes.

Out of the goodness of his heart, Rada borrows a mkokoteni and takes the indisposed Mike to his shack in nearby Ngara, a decision he regrets later, but also has the potential of changing his fortunes.

Meanwhile, Mike is reported missing and suspected to have been kidnapped. One thing leads to another and a contingent of crack unit personnel drawn from the country’s elite forces ‘rescues’ Mike, while Rada is taken into police custody.

When it becomes clear the charge of kidnap cannot hold in a court of law, Rada is released on bond. Mike feels remorseful seeing the kind of tribulations, including torture, his rescuer has undergone in the hands of cruel police interrogators. He pays Rada’s bond.

They soon part ways after Rada refuses Mike’s offer for further assistance. However, their fate appears intertwined as they soon find themselves together again, when Rada comes to and finds himself under the care of Mike, in their home.

After proving himself useful to the Thumbi family, a plan is hatched for Rada’s slum-dwelling parents to get introduced to the Thumbi’s. Drama awaits as it is through this meeting that long-forgotten history comes back to haunt the two families, when it emerges that Rada and not Mike is the billionaire’s real son and that the two were swapped at birth.

These revelations come in the form of action-packed flashbacks; explosive revelations that threaten to tear apart, the image Thumbi had carefully cultivated for himself all those years. His multi-billion business empire risks going down the drain, as sordid details of his dark past come back to haunt him.

You only need to read the book to get details for yourself. Here, Kombani, one of Kenya’s most prolific writers has surely outdone himself. This, in our view, is vintage Kombani, who announced himself to the literary landscape with his magnum opus, The Last Villains of Molo. Clearly, he has matured and gotten better with time.

One small issue though; the author failes to tie up a few loose ends in his plot, particularly the bit where Rada is arrested and taken to court. How is it that police interrogators neglected to tell him what he was arrested for? Again, since most of the book is narrated from Rada’s point of view, he conveniently omits the part where he was arrested from his house, where he had rescued/harboured Mike.

It thus gets confusing for the reader, when Rada, in court, claims no knowledge of Mike, in view of his association with him at the storm drain and subsequent housing him at his Ngara shack, from where they were smoked out by police.

This can only be down to authorial oversight, which would have been cured through keen editorial intervention.  

That oversight though doesn’t dampen the fire in Hawkers-Pokers, for it addresses issues that affect our daily lives, like child theft and child swapping in our maternity hospitals. Something about the book’s ending cries for a sequel.     

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Books Featured Fiction Reviews

For the love of the game

Title: Benji’s Big Win
Author: Nducu wa Ngugi
Publisher: East African Educational Publishers
Availability: Leading Bookstores
Reviewer: Mbugua Ngunjiri

Though he enjoys his life in school, there are a number of things bothering Benji.
Top of them is his father’s apparent disinterest in his budding football career. He is not only the top striker in Kamden Boys School, he is also the team captain. Not once has his father, Musa come to watch any of his games; which is rather baffling considering that the father used to be a star footballer in his youthful days.
Karis is the other major source of Benji’s worry. A big bodied boy, Karis has been tormenting Benji through incessant bullying, to a point of him getting recurring nightmares. While his mother is sympathetic about the situation, the father comes down hard on the lad, wondering aloud why the son can’t stand up to the bully.
Then there are loggers, who with the apparent backing of government, have invaded Loki forest, cutting down trees. Keepers, the local environmental lobby group, led by Benji’s mother, appears to have hit a brick wall in terms of stopping the destruction of the forest. Benji and his friends are worried about the adverse environmental consequences that will befall their community as a result of the ongoing forest destruction.
Benji is the lead character in Nducu wa Ngugi’s book Benji’s Big Win, which won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, in the youth category, this year. Nducu is one Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s offsprings, trying to follow their famous father’s footsteps in making a name for themselves in the world of writing. This is Nducu’s second book after City Murders, published by East African Educational Publishers, which also happens to be his father’s Kenyan publisher.
In the book, the reader follows Benji’s escapades and close calls, waiting to see how his troubles are going to get resolved.
Soon, we get an inkling of why Musa appears to be dead set against his son’s football career. He has health issues arising from an injury he sustained as a footballer for Umoja Stars, the national team, while playing against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon. This injury almost rendered him immobile, he is constantly on medication and undergoing therapy.
As a result, Benji’s father is stays at home, jobless, and has to rely on his wife to provide on the family. Though it is not spelt out in black and white, in the book, Musa must be anxious and worried that his son might suffer similar fate and be faced with an uncertain future. That is why he insists that Benji instead focuses on his studies, as that is what guarantees his future.
Using Musa’s example, the author brings out the sad state of footballers and other athletes, in Kenya, who lack support structures from the government and  end up leading pathetic lifestyles. Perhaps this explains why our football remains stunted as the players are constantly on the lookout for alternative sources of earning a livelihood; local football cannot guarantee that.
On the family front, we see the tension in Musa’s household, where his wife is the sole bread winner as the husband is incapacitated. Though she doesn’t show it, she must be feeling the strain of providing for her family alone. Already, there are signs of latent friction with Benji’s parents, when Musa gives his son an order and his wife reverses it.
Many families are undergoing almost similar troubles, particularly post-Covid, when many bread winners were rendered jobless and have had to rely on their spouses. Some families completely fell apart. Though the book does not give Musa’s perspective, no doubt he must feel his authority, as the man of the house, undermined; sickly and jobless, now seeing his wife and child disobey his orders. Thank God the family is still intact, but for how long?
Not as lucky though is Abele’s family. Abele is a beautiful girl, Benji has eyes for. She hails from Balaza Estate, in Nairobi, but stays in Loki with her uncle due to the fact that her own father is unable to sufficiently provide for his family. Abele is thus one mouth less to feed.
Meanwhile, the matter of Loki forest’s destruction sticks out like a sore thumb among residents of the community. Well, this is not a new phenomenon in Kenya. We have seen politically connected individuals being allowed to visit destruction on the environment by settling in protected forests like in the case of Mau. Before that, there was the protracted struggle to save Karura Forest; a struggle that won the late Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Prize.
On the bullying front, Karis is unrelenting. There are several episodes where Benji comes off worse for wear.
Karis’ bullying gets worse and is expelled from Kamden to Mawingu, a neighbouring school.
Still, a final showdown looms between the two protagonists when they come face to face in the local ‘derby’; a grudge match between Kamden and Mawingu.
The prize is too tantalizing for Benji. For one, winning the game will win him local bragging rights and the affections of Abele, who is also being courted by his nemesis, Karis.
During the game, Karis goes personal on Benji, a fight almost breaking out between the two. Despite huge odds, Benji scores the winning goal for his school. Icing on the cake is when, at the end of the game, Benji realises that his father was among the spectators, cheering him on.
Upon losing the game, Karis mellows down and seeks Benji’s forgiveness.
Though Benji wins the affections of Abele, he loses her as she is forced to go back to Nairobi, since his uncle is now unable to take care of her.
The book ends without the issue of Loki Forest being resolved. Could this be a signal that a sequel to the book is in the works. This is not far-fetched for, towards the end of the book, Benji and his pal, Jasper are plotting to visit Abele in Balaza.
Benji’s Big Win makes for interesting reading but the author needs to work on a few issues to improve on his craft. First, his writing needs to be grounded on some reality. How is it that Benji learns, at the last minute, that Karis is playing for Mawingu? Even prior to his expulsion, there was no mention of Karis’ involvement in football. Just like with Benji’s example, football requires commitment and regular training. One just doesn’t wake up and find themselves lining up for a major tournament.
The author’s stay abroad shows in his usage of US phrases and words. While these do not hurt, some words like cleats, for football boots, as it is understood locally, might end up confusing the young readers.
All in all, Benji’s Big Win is a major score for Nducu and the fact that it won an award is testament to his writing potential.

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Books Culture Non-Fiction Reviews

Feminists are not unhappy women who hate men

Title: We should all be feminists

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Reviewer: Scholastica Moraa

Being a diehard Chimamanda fan, it is always a pleasure reading her works. Being a feminist it is an absolute thrill reading and rereading this treasure.  The book explores what a feminist is and what a truly beautiful world it would be if we were all feminists. Believing in a world where we are treated equally regardless of our gender.

We are living in a world where by being born female, women are already guilty of something. They are trying to measure up to the expectations the world has set but it is hard given the circumstances. Being unmarried is considered a personal failure while the unmarried men are said to be taking their time. We are raising men who are taught to be ‘hard’. Who are taught to be afraid of fear and vulnerability.  Then women have the more difficult job of catering to these fragile egos.

This is a beautiful book because it reminds us that feminists are not unhappy women who hate men and who shy away from their feminine said. But women advocating for a fair world. For both boys and girls. We really should all be feminists.

I would give this book a ten any day.

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Books Featured Non-Fiction Personalities Releases Reviews

In Spare, British tabloids more than met their match

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Title: Spare

Author: Prince Harry

Reviewer: Mbugua Ngunjiri

Never, in their wildest imaginations, did players in the British media expect that a member of the royal family would come swinging at them the way rebel Prince Harry has done in his tell-all book Spare.

The tabloids took refuge in the fact that the royal household operates under the motto of ‘never complain, never explain’, to launch all manner of cowardly attacks on the monarchy, including outright fabrications and falsehoods. After all, they comforted themselves, the royals, bound by their strict rules, can never come out to tell their side of the story.

They also knew that they owned the megaphone through which they could poison the mood of the public against the royals, if they did not cooperate.

With the British media, the royal household is held hostage; they are virtually prisoners; the message being: ‘you either do as we want or else…’

Enter Prince Harry, a rebel within the royal household. Still smarting from the way his mother, the universally loved Princess Diana, who was hounded by paparazzi, who were only interested in taking photos even as the she lay dead in an accident they had caused.

The tabloids targeted Harry from an early age, when he was still in school. Normal teenage truancy by the prince was regularly being analysed and dissected in the papers. The royal family could not bring itself to defend and protect the vulnerable prince.

From the book, it is clear that two of his girlfriends broke up with him as they could not cope with the hounding and relentless intrusion of their privacy. One of His exes committed suicide in 2020. He blames the media for her death.

As the book’s title suggests, Harry is the Spare as opposed to William who is the Heir. Thus, according to Harry, the royal family was too willing to sacrifice the Spare in order to protect the Heir and indeed the rest of the family.

Thus whenever the media caught wind of something negative emanating from the royal household, they were appeased by being given ‘something’ about Harry, never mind its authenticity. Whenever Harry complained to his father – the now King Charles – the father always had a stock answer for him: ‘don’t read the papers’.

This was hypocritical coming from Charles seeing as it was him and his wife Camilla who, through their offices, regularly fed the media with negative information about his sons, in order to shore up their image. William also followed suit and also took part in leaking stories in the media about his brother.

In the book, William comes out as an aloof whiny entitled brat, given to throwing tantrums over minor issues. Despite the fact that he is almost certainly assured of inheriting the kingship from his father, he is not happy with the roles assigned to his younger brother and which appears to accomplish rather well.

William griped endlessly when the Palace approved Harry’s patronage of war veterans’ activities, claiming that those activities were eating up the royal household’s budget. This is despite the fact that Harry’s involvement with the veterans was only taking up a tiny fraction of the budget, with corporate donations plugging the rest.

The royal household saw red when Harry hooked up with Meghan Markle. Here was a woman, who through her acting had curved out a global profile for herself. They could not, according to Harry, stand being outshone. That is when the media leaks against Harry and went on overdrive.

From the palace, the onslaught was led by William. Many are the days when Harry came home to find his wife in tears. Such was the intensity of attacks that Meghan, according to the book, considered ending her life. The race-baiting was especially ugly.

When they could take it any longer, Harry, his wife and child ran to Canada, where for six weeks they led a peaceful life, before the Daily Mail leaked their location and the hounding by paparazzi resumed.

Harry says that their unending war with the media led to Meghan suffering a miscarriage. That explains why he reserves his harshest words for the media, calling them a ‘dreadful mob of dweebs and crones and cut-rate criminals and clinically diagnosable sadists along Fleet Street’.

As stated earlier, the media in Britain never thought that a royal would go to the media to tell his side of the story, let alone a tell-book. Their coverage of the book is telling; it is full of hurt and anger: How dare this brat turn the tables on us, exposing our lies about him and his family; making us look bad.

If they thought that they are the only wielders of the megaphone, well Harry, with his best-selling book, wields it better. Not forgetting that Meghan is yet to write hers…

In Harry, the British tabloids have finally met their match. Diana must be rejoicing wherever she is.

For their shameless race-baiting of Meghan, British tabloids deserve anything and everything coming their way.

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Books Culture Education Featured Fiction Personalities

Kenyan priest who wrote a novel and won an award

Ten things you should know about Father Samuel Wachira, the only priest in Kenya, to have written a full-length book on popular literature.

1. Father Samuel Wachira was born and raised in Sagana, Kirinyaga County.

2. He studied priesthood at the Pontifical Institute for Biblical Studies in Rome.

3. His first posting as a priest was in the Amazon Forest, in Brazil, where he served for close to ten years.

4. Deep in the Amazon Forest, there was no electricity and the road network was poor. Sometimes it would rain for a whole straight week and the priest would spend the entire time indoors. “I decided to occupy myself with writing,” he says. That is how Gold Rush, his first book, was born.

5. The death of Father Kamau Ithondeka, who was his college-mate in Rome, during the 2007/8 Post-Election Violence, moved Father Wachira to write Whistleblower. He was still ministering in Brazil.

6. After he came back to Kenya, Father Wachira served briefly at St Mukasa Parish, in Kahawa West, before being posted to Blessed Allamano Runogone Catholic Parish, in Meru, where he serves to date. Back in Kenya, he wrote Tales from the Amazon, a collection of short stories targeted at Standard Seven and Eight pupils.

7. His fourth book, A Spider’s Web, dealing with drug abuse, was made a set-book for Teacher Training Colleges (2021 to 2025). “Writing this book helped me cope with the deaths of my father and younger brother,” says Father Wachira.

8. During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, Father Wachira, again, found himself with spare time as churches had been closed. He used the time to write Hustler’s Chains, which won the Wahome Mutahi Literary Prize, in September.

9. Two of his books have been runners-up in the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature (Whistle Blower in 2017 and The Spider’s Web in 2019)

10. Father Wachira has been published by three different publishers. East African Educational Publishers (Gold Rush and Tales from the Amazon), Longhorn (Whistleblower) and One Planet (Spider’s Web and Hustlers’ Chains).

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Books Culture Featured Personalities publishing

Prof Kithaka wa Mberia has occupied the same office for 41 years

Five little known facts about Prof Kithaka wa Mberia.

1. He teaches Linguistics at the University of Nairobi and not Kiswahili, as widely believed by many. One of the many Vice-Chancellors he has served under, at UoN, long held the belief that Prof Mberia taught Kiswahili.

2. His book Kwenzi Gizani, which won the Jomo Kenyatta prize for Literature, last month (September 2022), was the first book he was submitting to be considered for a literary award.

3. He has self-published all his books, including Kifo Kisimani, which was a set book between 2005 and 2012.

4. He has occupied the same office, at the University of Nairobi for 41 years.

5. He writes in Kiswahili as a matter of principle. “I would be read more widely if I decided to write in English,” he says. “That is a price I am willing to pay.”