The New York Times has unveiled their 100 notable books of 2014 and there is novel by a name readers of this blog are familiar with; Dinaw Mengestu. Mengestu entered our consciousness for the first time when he was a guest of our Storymoja Hay Festival in 2012 and we have been stalking him following […]
Category: Fiction
There is something about the relationship between two human beings and how they get together and hopefully live happily ever after. This is why some of the biggest selling books on the planet are in the Romance Novel category and at the top of that pile are Mills and Book and Harlequin series. This is […]
South African writers Lauren Beukes and Sarah Lotz are in the running for this years Goodreads Choice Awards. Their two books Broken Monsters and The Three are in the semi-finals for the horror category of what is considered to be the biggest website for book lovers. Beukes’ Broken Monsters is about a serial killer, (most of […]
Ethiopian born writer Dinaw Mengestu is in the running for this years Kirkus Prize as his book All Our Names was among the finalists for its first annual book prizes. The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction […]
Wanjiku Wa Ngugi is a daughter of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o who is yet again being tipped as a frontrunner for the Nobel Prize for literature. She showed that she too could get published when she unleashed to the unsuspecting public a book called The Fall of Saints. It is a whodunit type of book which […]
Gojon Pin and others stories is the latest anthology from our friends at the Caine Prize. The book contains stories from several writers the most “high profile” being the winner of the 2014 prize, Kenya’s Okwiri Oduor as well as the other four shortlisted ladies and gents. The others are the twelve writers from across […]
The Caine Prize 2014 winner has just been announced in London and the winner this year is Kenyan writer Okwiri Oduor. She becomes the third Kenyan winner of the prize after Binyanvanga Wainaina in 2002 and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor on 2003. The ceremony with several speeches started with a minute of silence for the just […]
Erotica. Written porn. This surely has to be one of my favourite part of the written word. Xaviera Hollander is the erotica writer who got me hooked many years ago with her The Happy Hooker: My Own Story memoir about her life as a sex worker. That was in high school. Since then I have […]
The overall winner for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is Ugandan writer Jennifer Makumbi. The East African was awarded her prize at a glittering ceremony on Friday evening in Kampala, Uganda by novelist and short story writer Romesh Gunesekera. The winning story is about a grieving widow who arrives at Entebbe Airport from Manchester […]
Nganga Mbugua is a Kenyan publisher with his Big Books and the author of several titles including This Land is Our Land, Terrorists of the Aberdare and Different colours. For his efforts he won the Wahome Mutahi’s Literary prize for Terrorists in 2010 and Different Colours in 2012. The writer has been pleasantly surprised this […]
Book: Killing Sahara (Black Star Nairobi) Author: Mukoma Wa Ngugi Publisher: Kwela Books Year of publication: 2013 Number of pages: 229 Genre: Crime fiction We have met Ishmael Fofona the African American detective in African literature before. He was introduced to us by Mukoma Wa Ngugi when he wrote his first major book Nairobi Heat […]
Inspector Mollel was introduced to many of us in Richard Crompton’s debut The Hour of the Red God last year. The book was received very well and I have to say I am a fan if you read my review of the book. The latest edition in the Inspector Mollel series is out today and […]
Book: I do not come to you by chance Author: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Publisher: Phoenix Publishers Year of publication: 2009 Number of pages: 343 Have you ever gotten an email from a person you have never heard of who is promising you that they need your help to access a huge amount of money? Many […]
South African author Lauren Beukes has slowly been taking over the “alternative” spaces in writing that many African writers aren’t famous for. Her first book Moxyland was a thriller about technological progress, and the freedoms it removes. Zoo City followed soon and this one is about a woman who finds things using her intuition. That […]
Book: Hour of the Red God/ The Honeyguide Author: Richard Crompton Publisher: Picador Year of publication: 2013 Number of pages: 290 Buy you own copy of Hour of the Red God: A Detective Mollel Novel There are a few legends of Kenyan policemen who love their jobs. In the 1990s, there was a famous traffic […]
