Categories
Awards Books Fiction Issues News

Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature: A call for entries

The Kenya Publishers Association (KPA) has made a call for submissions for the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. Winners of the award will be unveiled in September, during the 24th edition of the Nairobi International Book Fair.

Titles to be submitted must have been published between 2020 and May 2022. There are two levels of awards: The Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and The Wahome Mutahi Award for Humour and Satire.

The Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature has three main categories, namely Adult, Youth and Children. Each category has an English and Kiswahili version.

The Wahome Mutahi Literary Award has an English and Kiswahili category. Writers of drama/plays can submit their entries under the adult category of the Jomo Kenyatta Prize and the Wahome Mutahi Award.

Submissions for each category should be accompanied with five non-returnable copies of the book to be entered. Each submission should also be accompanied by a fee of sh10,000 for KPA members and sh25,000 for non-members.

All entries must have been published in Kenya. Although the quality of the content will be the overriding criterion, there are other considerations to be looked into. These are: quality of binding, cover design, quality of paper used, quality of illustrations where applicable and the general layout of the book.

The Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature is the brainchild of KPA. It was established in the early 1970s and is open to Kenyan writers whose works are published in Kenya. The prize is awarded to the author of the most outstanding new book in all the categories.

Categories
Books Fiction Reviews

The People of Ostrich Mountain

Title: The People of Ostrich Mountain

Author: Ndirangu Githaiga

Reviewer: Scholastica Moraa

Some stories leave after you read them, but some stay long after the last page. This was one such book. It lingers on like a fond memory. ‘The People of Ostrich Mountain’ tells the story of Wambui during the colonial period and as Kenya gained independence, her life in Alliance Girls High School, love for numbers, friendship with a British teacher Eileen Atwood and the lives of her children. Spanning decades, Ndirangu tells the story in a beautifully and simply written style that would be appealing to so many readers. From the foot of Mount Kenya, to Alliance Girls, to Nairobi and the streets of Chicago, the story grips you and never wants to let go.

 It tells the story of mathematically talented Wambui, who has to grapple between different choices on a quest to give her family the best. The choices she has to make between her dreams and her love for her family. Her children, Muthoni and Ray, flourish abroad with Ray contending with different odds to become a medical doctor abroad. Ndirangu’s profession as a physician may be the reason behind a really enlightening exploration on the tribulations of a medical student both in Kenya and abroad.

The book also explores the life of Eileen Atwood, whose belief that her destiny lied in Kenya led her to live in the country for forty years shaping the lives of hundreds of girls in Alliance. Although the story is fiction, one cannot help but connect with the various characters in the story. The feeling of belonging, the struggle for independence, finding of one’s purpose, struggles with immigration, ruthless use of power, are but some of the issues we all deal with on a daily basis.

Apart from the desire to want the story to be fleshed out a bit, which may be just be a need from a thirsty reader, ‘The People of Ostrich Mountain’ is a beautiful read that I’d recommend to anyone looking for something African, relatable, beautiful and unputdownable.

Categories
Books Non-Fiction Reviews

Who hurt you?

Title: Confessions of Nairobi Women

Author: Joan Thatiah

Reviewer: Scholastica Moraa

I will be lying if the catchy title did not light in me the desire to read this book. Confessions… secrets … scandals have always held an appeal to everyone. Joan Thatiah did not disappoint. The fact that the stories are true makes the experience otherworldly. I love the fact that Joan was asking the question so many people want to be asked.. who hurt you? What are you afraid of? When did things start going south? what pain are you trying to hide behind that smile?

Joan Thatiah steps into the shoes of these women and takes us with her. She dunks us in the lives of these women and their fear and pain seeps into our souls too. The stories are written in a simple yet beautiful style and are ideal for people looking for easy yet appealing reads.

We meet Atemi whose husband is infertile but asks too much from her. In another we meet a woman whose father broke her mother and who is afraid of becoming her mother. We meet a girl whose father took advantage of her and turned her into who she is now- a beautiful woman bleeding on the inside.

We also meet a pregnant teenager who clawed her way to where she is now but whose demons cling to her skirts and just can’t let her go. We meet women who have undergone violence and are still piecing their pieces together. We meet conwomen and prostitutes.  Businesswomen and wives. Mothers and daughters. Reflections of who we are. Of what we go through. A mirror of what the society has done to women.

The book is a candid reflection of what most women go through, why they make the decisions they do and how they feel about them. Most people make decisions based on their experiences or the experiences of their loved ones…

Reading these stories, I would really love to say I don’t know these women. That these stories are not real. But how can I when I know tens of women exactly like these ones? How can I when they are my friends? How can I pretend that their stories are not real when their demons cling to my soul?

This is a beautiful read. Not just to women who make the largest percentage of Joan Thatiah’s readers but to everyone who can read. Because through pieces like this… we understand.  And maybe if we all understand, we will be kinder. We will leave our judgemental stuff by the door when we meet other people.

Totally unputdownable. Met and exceeded expectations. Would highly recommend any day.

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.

Categories
Books Culture Non-Fiction Personalities Reviews

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.

Categories
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.

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.