Category: Fiction

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.     

Categories
Arts Awards Culture Events Fiction Issues News Non-Fiction Releases Short story

Submissions for Kendeka Prize now open

Short story writers have until May 15 to submit their entries to the Kendeka Prize for African Literature.

The call out for submission for the 2023 prize was made on Saturday January 28, during the inaugural Kendeka Lecture, held at the Mount Kenya University. The lecture, titled Why Literature Matters and Literary Prizes Matter, was delivered by Prof Austin Bukenya.

Entry for the prize is free.

“The Prize will be awarded for the best unpublished short story either in fiction or creative non-fiction,” says a statement from the Kendeka secretariat, signed by Andrew Maina, the founder. “The first prize will be Ksh100,000, while the second and the third prizes shall be Ksh50,000 and Ksh25,000 respectively.”

The announcement was made by Prof Goro Kamau, the incoming chair of the Kendeka Prize for African Literature.

Entrants must be born in, or are citizens of any African country. Manuscripts should be of between 3000 and 5000 words and must be in English.

The overall winner of the 2022 Prize was Scholastica Moraa,(Kenya) for her short story titled ‘Chained’. Adaoro Raji, (Nigeria) was the first runners-up for her story ‘Star Boy’, while Beverley Ann Abrahams, from Zimbabwe was the second runners-up for her short story, ‘Isithunzi’.

The winner of the 2021 Kendeka Prize for African Literature was Jenny Robson, Botswana, author of Water for Wine. Fatima Okhousami, from Nigeria, was the first runners-up for her story, The Women of Atinga House, while Okpanachi Irene Ojochegbe, from Nigeria, was the second runners-up for her story, Au Pair.

Other submission guidelines.

  • One entry per writer.
  • Entries should be attached in Microsoft Word or Rich Text format, with the title of the story as the file name.
  • The first page of the story should include the title of the story and the number of words.
  • The entry must be typed in Times New Roman 12-point font with 1.5 line spacing.
  • Entries must be sent as attachments to an email.
  • The email to which the story is attached must include the legal name of the writer, telephone number, a short Bio, age, and country of residence.
  • Entrants agree that the prize organizers may publicize the fact that a story has been entered, long listed, shortlisted or won the prize.
  • An author of a long listed story agrees to its inclusion in the anthology, and to work with editors to get the story ready for publication.
  • The long listing of a story is not a guarantee that the story shall be included in the anthology.
  • The winners, first and second runners-up in the past Kendeka Prize, are not eligible.
  • Every author confirms that the submission is their original work, it has not been published anywhere else, and that it has not been long listed in this prize or in any other prize.
  • The entrant gives exclusive global print and digital rights to Solano Publications Ltd for the long listed stories for publication in an anthology. The author retains the copyright.
  • The judges’ decision is final.
Categories
Arts Awards Culture Events Fiction News Personalities Poetry

Cynthia Abdallah wins 2022 Itanile Award

Kenya’s Cynthia Abdallah is among the winners of the 2022 Itanile Awards. The Awards, administered by Itanile Magazine, rewards the effort and commitment of literary creatives for advancing the African experience, through storytelling.

“We select winners of the award from works we publish from January to December every year,” says Itanile. “Our guest editor selected winners based on strength, quality, and the impact of their works on the Itanile community. The winners in each category received $200 each.”

Ms Abdallah won in the Chapbook category, for her poetry collection, Author’s Feet.

In the Fiction category, the winners were Chioma Mildred Okonkwo for Time is Different Over Here and Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya for A Rehearsal of Shame. In the Poetry category, the winners were Onyedikachi Shaquille Johnson for May the Thirtieth and Olabisi Akinwale At the Twilight of Your Sojourner.

Itanile is a literary brand that provides a platform for African writers to publish stories they want to tell about the African experience.

The awarded works, selected by guest editors, will be chosen based on strength, quality, and impact on the Itanile community. All works published by Itanile throughout the year – up till October – will be considered for the awards.

Ms Abdallah is a multi-talented artist. She is not only a writer; she is also a filmmaker. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, My Six Little Fears and The Author’s Feet. She has also authored a collection of short stories: The Musunzu Tree and Other Stories.

Two of her documentaries, Tales from the Pandemic and Inyumba Yu Mulogooli, were nominated for the Kalasha 2022 Awards. 

She is also the producer of The Author’s Feet, a show available on YouTube. 

Ms Abdallah, 36, is based in Caracas Venezuela, where she teaches English and Literature. 

Categories
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.

Categories
Fiction Reviews Short story

The flower that withered too soon

Title: Chained

Author: Scholastica Moraa

Reviewer: Mbugua Ngunjiri

Chained is the haunting tale of 22-year-old Danielle, alone, bleeding in the bathroom, staring at imminent death after having procured an abortion. Her thoughts are in a state of turmoil as she reflects on the events that led to the present moment.

She is full of regrets but it is too late now.

The story is story is told via flashback. Danielle’s father has just secured her an internship position at an auctioneer’s firm, in a remote outpost. At first she finds the job boring but then things start brightening somewhat after she meets and falls in love with a man, working at a law firm.

The girl wrestles with feelings of guilt, but then, with each sweetener she receives from her lover, she discards her inhibitions and justifies the illicit affair.  Sample this: “I turned from preaching ‘monogamy is the true love’ to ‘the y in your man is silent’.”

Even amidst the justifications, the man’s wedding ring serves as an ‘unwelcome’ reminder of what she is getting herself into. Though she tries resisting the man’s advances, her defences are weak and she quickly succumbs to his slick moves; gifts and all.

Like a knife through butter, her feeble attempts at resisting the sexual overtures from the man are easily swept aside, when he sweetens the deal with offers of employment.

After she loses her virginity to the man, Danielle naively hopes that her guardian angel will shield her from getting pregnant. Shortly thereafter, she he finds out, to her horror, that she is indeed carrying the man’s baby.

This leads her to a backstreet clinic to procure the services of an abortionist. She does not have enough cash to pay for the ‘service’, so the man ‘offers’ to offset the balance if only she agrees to have sex with him.

The operation goes horribly wrong and now the girl stares death in eye.

The issue of illegally procured abortions has been with us for the longest time. So too are the deaths that follow. So widespread are these incidents that society has reduced the victims to mere statistics; it is not news anymore. However, in this story, Scholastica Moraa humanises the subject through her tragic character Danielle.

Chained painfully brings home the fact that victims of this vice are living, breathing people, with needs and desires, just like we do; only that they made a wrong choice at some point in life. They are daughters, sisters, nieces, granddaughters, etc. They could be your relative.

The story is also an indictment of predatorial men; particularly married men, who prey on naïve girls, ruining their futures, even destroying their lives, like in Danielle’s case. Many men in such instances get away scot-free, probably to go and ruin the life of yet another girl.

The man, in this story, remains unnamed, probably the author’s way of highlighting the anonymity of such men; and just how easy it is for them to escape unpunished.

Moraa’s searing prose brings to the fore the debate about abortion, which the Kenyan society would rather it remains buried under the carpet, while girls like Danielle, continue losing their lives in the process of trying to procure illegal abortions. Those who survive are left permanently scarred, others unable to bear children.

A few days ago, a quack medic going by the name Mugo wa Wairimu was convicted in a case where he had been caught on camera sexually assaulting patients at one of his clinics. It is also a well-documented fact that wa Wairimu, among other things, offered abortion services to desperate Nairobi women.

Going by Danielle’s example where she had to offer her body, as part payment for the abortion, it is not too difficult to imagine this was normal fare at wa Wairimu’s clinics.

Moraa’s story is a powerful reminder to the society that women’s reproductive health is a topic that needs to be addressed with utmost urgency. Abortion is a touchy subject worldwide. Here in Kenya, it remains illegal except in certain mitigating circumstances. In the US, the Republican dominated Supreme Court repealed Roe v Wade, a landmark decision which ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion.

The reversal of Roe v Wade has had some ramifications in the US, the latest being the poor performance for Republicans in the just concluded midterm elections, where the much anticipated ‘Red Wave’ failed to materialise.

Chained stands out in expert use of language. The author has a way with words; every word has meaning. An example will suffice: “… It all came down to a spoilt love story and I was the villain. It was my love story but I was a minor character…”

Moraa’s ease with words can be attributed to the fact that she is a poet. Now poetry, according to Rita Dove, an American poet, is ‘language at it most distilled and most powerful’.

Chained won the 2022 Kendeka Prize for African Literature.

Categories
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).

Categories
Books Fiction publishing Reviews

Magical tale wins children’s award

Title: Chadi’s Trip

Author: Sarah Haluwa

Publisher: Storymoja

Reviewer: Mbugua Ngunjiri

The village of Kalole is faced with a deadly plague; Shaka Risha. Anyone who contracts it, most likely ends up dead. The whole village is worried; there is no knowing who will catch the deadly ailment next.
The village oracle announces that the cure can only be found in the forest, where spirits live. The bravest warriors, led by chief’s son, are dispatched to the forest to get the antidote, but they fail to return.
Another group is sent to the forest and they, too, fail to return. The very thought of venturing into the forest petrifies everyone in the village, yet the plague is still claiming its deadly toll.
When no one else is willing to go for the cure, little Chadi volunteers to go to the dreaded forest.
Will she make it where even the brave warriors failed?
You can only get the answer by reading Chadi’s Trip, a children’s book written by Sarah Haluwa and published by Storymoja.


This book won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in the children’s category. The award is organised by the Kenya Publishers Association.
Find out the unique qualities that set Chadi apart from other children and which make her suitable for the dangerous mission in the forest, where she will come up against unpredictable spirits.
Chadi’s Trip employs magical realism as a literary technique to fire up the imagination of young readers. The fact that it is a young girl engaging the spirits to a point of outmaneuvering them, makes it all the more attractive to the intended audience. Children love heroism.
It should be noted that the story is based in Kenya’s coastal region, where young girls are faced with heavy odds. These range from debilitating poverty, teen pregnancies not forgetting the less talked about teenage prostitution that feeds the underground sex tourism market.
It is therefore safe to argue that these girls lack role models. Haluwa’s book serves as a welcome inspiration to such girls, seeing as lead character is a young girl, a positive role model, beats odds and is eventually celebrated by a whole village.
Writing for children is no walk in the park, thus the author, known to pen adult stuff online, should be commended for successfully making that all-important transition.

Maisha Yetu feels that this book deserves the accolade it got