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Weep Not, Child
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Novel, 1964
Kikuyu family torn apart by the Mau Mau uprising and colonial land dispossession in 1950s Kenya's central highlands.
Books set in Kenya
Seven books by writers from Kenya, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat.
About the literature of Kenya
Kenya's best-known writer is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, whose novels return to the Mau Mau years and independence. He began in English and later switched to Gikuyu: his satire Wizard of the Crow, set in an invented African dictatorship, was written in Gikuyu. Other Kenyans write in English and Kiswahili, drawing on a rich heritage of oral storytelling, and land, colonial rule and the disappointments of independence recur.
Weep Not, Child is the place to start: a Kikuyu family is torn apart by the Mau Mau uprising. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's Dust moves between Nairobi and the remote north, from the colonial era to the violence after the 2007 election. Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, tells her story in Unbowed, from a rural Nyeri childhood to environmental and democratic activism.
By writers from Kenya
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A Grain of Wheat
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Novel, 1967
Villagers in Thabai confront betrayal and loyalty on the eve of Uhuru independence in 1963, after the Emergency.
The River Between
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Novel, 1965
Two Kikuyu ridges divided over Christianity, circumcision and colonial influence in the early twentieth-century highlands.
Petals of Blood
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Novel, 1977
Post-independence disillusion in the fictional village of Ilmorog, tracing land, corporate greed and corruption across the rural-to-Nairobi divide.
Dust
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Novel, 2013
Family secrets and political violence spanning Kenya's history from the colonial era through the Moi years, set across Nairobi and the northern Rift.
Wizard of the Crow
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Novel, 2004. Translated from Gikuyu by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Satirical epic of a dictatorship, drawing on Kenyan politics, though set in an invented country, so a looser fit.
Unbowed
Wangari Maathai
Memoir, 2006
Memoir of the Nobel-winning Green Belt Movement founder, from rural Nyeri childhood to environmental and democratic activism in Kenya.
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