Tusome

17 January 2014

Let's Enjoy Our Trash; Mochama - Section the Second



In Peter Kimani's Before the Rooster Crows, socially unacceptable happenings breathe life into the novel. Daughter suffers rape under her own father. Mumbi, Muriuki's childhood girlfriend, escapes sexual assault from the village to the city of Gichuka where she becomes 'a girl of the night.'
The protagonist, Muriuki, avenges his girlfriend's death by murdering the British young navy officer killer, Sam Dessertstorm. Muriuki is then sentenced to life imprisonment by the president, after the judge - Harkman Anderson himself 'is found guilty of leading the suspect to commit a crime - to kill on the basis of whiteness versus blackness'. There are several flashbacks illuminating Kimachia's bloodshed struggle against the British during the Mau Mau.
Henry Ole Kulet's Bandits of Kibi also explores societal atrocity. The whole Masai community suffers dearly in the hands of intra-ethnic clashes; which claims the lives of many, including Mama Manta's son - Lanto. It's interesting to note how Kulet, the winner of the 2013 Jomo Kenyatta Prize for literature with Vanishing Heards, parallels these clashes with the post election violence which dogged the country in 2007/2008.
My Dear Bottle, authored by David G. Maillu, takes the reader through the main character's great friendship with the bottle - beer. He thinks that it directs him to good things like winning women easily, while it really makes life miserable for him. He has nothing to show from his job, and his wife severally runs away.
© Peter Ngila 2013
 

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