Peter KimaniRezensionen

Reason Read: ANC, Kenya

Peter Kimani was born in Kenya in 1971. I really enjoyed this work and I think the author was able to bring out issues in a natural way so that it never felt preachy or judgmental. It is historical fiction and explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy through the stories of three men involved with the building of a railroad linking Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean — what the Kikuyu called the ‘Iron Snake’ and the British called the ‘Lunatic Express.’” I think this is a debut novel but it is very good and I am glad I read it.

I continue to enjoy Akashic's series of short story anthologies that are set in locations around the world. The fourteen stories in Nairobi Noir are an excellent collection that had me moving from neighborhood to neighborhood within that city. As I moved from place to place, I met Somali refugees and Kenya Cowboys; I confronted life, death, poverty, and love, side by side with people from all walks of life.

There's not a single bad story in the entire collection, but I have to admit that two made a profound impression on me. "She Dug Two Graves" by Winfred Kionga is centered on a proverb about revenge, and it's one that I shall never forget: "When seeking revenge, dig two graves-- one for yourself." The second story is Kinyanjui Kombaru's "Andaki." This incredibly powerful story tells readers just what mothers will do to save and to protect their sons who have been falsely accused of crimes. Wow.

More than some of the other anthologies in this series, Nairobi Noir drew me into life in this city in Kenya-- an example of armchair travel at its very best. I look forward to my next trip with Akashic, and if you haven't tried any of the books in this series, I highly recommend that you do so.½

Another great bunch of short (noir) stories from the Akashic. This one of course is all from Nairobi, and makes one very leery about even wanting to visit the city. Since most of the stories dealt with dirty cops, it does suggest that it is a big problem to be so prevalent in the fiction, written by people who live there.

I keep reading these anthologies and I keep enjoying them. Great writers all.

I’m a big fan of Akashic Books’ Noir series. They feature a dozen or so stories about a city or state by authors native to the region. They are a wonderful way to do some armchair traveling and to be introduced to new authors as well as revisiting favorite authors.

This collection is one of my favorites of the series – from Peter Kimani’s Introduction giving a thumbnail sketch of this capital city of Kenya and its fifteen million people, to the diversity of the stories and authors, this volume hits the mark.

My favorite story was The Hermit in the Helmet, a cautionary folk tale by well known author Ngugi Wa Thiong’o; but whom I hadn’t read previously. He is one of several of the authors featured in this edition that I plan to read more of their work.

Overall, a very strong collection. Highly recommended.½

Pretty amazing stories written by Kenyan authors, all of whom were new to me. Based on what I read here, they won't be new to me for long! The series is noir so expect some grit and some violence, with some great, very real characters. Highly recommended.½

The Akashic Noir series regularly provides very solid collections of geographically-based noir stories. I've said in other reviews that the books are probably best appreciated by those already familiar with the city in question. My favorite might be Phoenix Noir, and I know Phoenix better than many of the other cities featured in books in the series that I have read.

Nairobi I know little of -but that offers its own satisfaction. This book consists of stories written by Kenyan authors and edited by a Kenyan author. The stories do not perhaps provide as wide a range of noir settings and themes as some collections do: the stories here largely focus on a city of extreme poverty and official (especially police) corruption. whether the focus is this narrow because of the choices of the editor, or the individual choices of the authors, I don't know. But the result id instructive. Many of the stories are very strong, and for me the result is a convincing portrait of a town where the struggle to survive is omnipresent because of necessity more than because of the greed and venality that drives much noir.

I recommend this to anyone wanting a glimpse of Kenyan writing today.

I've read several of the Akashic Noir Series compilations and have enjoyed them all, but Nairobi Noir is the best of those I have read. Several of the short stories are masterpieces, most are gems. For me, the most outstanding story is "Number Sita" by Kevin Mwachiro but all of these stories are high quality, complex studies of people, the forces that drive them, and their actions. Absolutely five star!

I enjoyed this visit to Kenya and the neighborhoods and byways of Nairobi. The stories were absorbing and fascinating, if dark, but it's crime so there's that. They were for the most part not traditional noirs but cover a large range of topics and issues and give the armchair tourist a sense of what these writers are interested in. It's not my first foray into Kenyan crime fiction and I found some authors I want to follow up on.

I've lost track of how many Akashic Noir books I've read, but they continue to be amazing. This particular installment however, was a little rougher than most for two reasons. I wouldn't say the stories were darker than past collections, in fact they weren't as brutal as some others. But there was a theme that went through nearly every tale of police corruption that made the hopelessness of the situation so pervasive.

The other difficulty, there were a lot of words that weren't in English and while I could get an idea of their meaning from context, I felt there was a lot of wiggle room for me to miss nuances if I wasn't getting the meaning closely enough and that was a bit of a letdown. Akashic doesn't do a glossary of terms or footnotes really, but I would have appreciated it in this case.

This is a collection of short stories written by Kenyan authors, as part of the Akashic project. The collection is meant to shine light on the dark side of specific cities, in this case, Nairobi. The stories range broadly in terms of style and topic, from injustice to poverty to the genesis of a fable and more. Many of the authors have won prizes for their writing. They range in age from their 20s to their 80s. This was an Early Reviewer edition which I obtained due to my membership in the Early Reviewer group on Librarything.com. Fascinating glimpse into Nairobi society.

I love the Akashic Noir series. So far, I've only encountered one collection that really let me down. This is not that collection. In fact, Nairobi Noir is one of my favorite collections to date. Filled with a wide variety of stories, some of which I don't really think of as "noir", this collection doesn't contain anything too graphic. While some of the stories are disturbing, more are just sad and heartbreaking. There is even one that is more fable than noir, but I found it highly entertaining. I think my favorites were the stories that book-ended this collection: "She Dug Two Graves" by Winfred Kiunga and "The Night Beat" by Ngumi Kibera. I also really enjoyed "Mathree" by Makena Onjerika. I will say that if you are looking for something really dark, with graphic crime (detailed murders, rape,drugs, etc) this is probably not the collection for you. There are elements of those things, but there's only one story that I found truly horrifying, and one or two others that were unbearably sad. Overall, nearly every story was exquisitely written and I highly recommend this collection - an addition to the Akashic Noir series that the publisher can be very proud of and I'm grateful to the publisher and LibraryThing for an Early Reviewer copy in exchange for my honest review.½

A frustrating read that missed the mark in every possible way for me. This take on colonial and post-colonial Kenya should have been riveting but the characters were too cartoonish and the scenes too sketchy to really capture my attention. The satire didn't work for me either. There are limp forays into Midnights-Children-Land whimsy--for instance Babu's comically high forehead makes a repetitive motif not unlike Saleem Sinai's memorable nose--but they don't easily relate to a greater theme and so feel tacked-on and distracting. And listen, I am somewhat outraged at the treatment of women characters in the novel--from the anonymous, sexualized kiss in a dark hallway, to a young wife becoming a crippled invalid by sitting too long in one position on her harrowing journey to Kenya, to--and this really took the cake--the ludicrous, hmm, dare I say offensive? ok i did--treatment of Sally, who expresses her discomfort about colonialism by sleeping with her black gardener as atonement. There are just too many layers of irony there for this event to work. The writing isn't good enough for me to give the author benefit of the doubt that he is deliberately exposing Sally's hypocrisy in the way she exploits a man who is economically dependent on her, all the while thinking she is atoning. The scene is treated like a frivolous adventure to set up her husband McDonald's story arc, once he witnesses Sally's unfaithfulness directly and viscerally. There is no real human feeling in that scene--I felt sorry for these three fictional creations on the page, for the shabby way the author treated them.

I came away from this novel believing that satirical writing must have a bedrock-solid unmoving core of moral rightness, so that the reader knows very clearly where the author stands and can therefore place even the most outrageous and potentially offensive scenes into the right context. This book doesn't have that core of moral rightness, or at least, I couldn't find it.

3.75, rounding up.
Another great showing from my favorite series. There were many strong descriptions that transported me to Nairobi; I could almost smell the dirty streets and hear the city noises. And as with all anthologies, some stories resonated with me more than others (A Song From a Forgotten Place by Troy Onyango is still haunting my thoughts). Overall, a truly eclectic collection from a talented group of authors.

Like other books in the series, this collection of noir short stories is curated to convey the people and nuances of a place. Learning more about the scary and sad dimensions of Nairobi was moving and intriguing. Compared to the other locale collections I've read, I didn't find as much breadth. Most of the characters suffered tragic circumstances involving loss and oppression. There wasn't as much mystery nor the range of situations I observed in the other books. It's still an enjoyable read. I left it feeling like I knew Nairobi in ways I probably wouldn't have ever understood otherwise.

The old cliche about books being a magic carpet to anywhere is true for the Akashic Noir Series. Every volume takes me to a place I may never see in person (well, except for Milwaukee Noir), and introduces me to writers I may never have encountered otherwise.
Nairobi Noir is as fascinating and complex as the city of its title, and a treat for fans of contemporary crime fiction.

NAIROBI NOIR is edited by Peter Kimani. An ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) of NAIROBI NOIR was sent to me by the publisher, Akashic Books. Thank You.
The Noir series has over 75 titles, covering almost every continent, country, area and large city in the world. It is an anthology of short stories with an emphasis on Noir - a genre of crime fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, corruption and (extreme) moral ambiguity. Noir is dark, brooding, raw, with bleak and sleazy settings. My favorite description of Noir is “whiskey neat.”
Each title follows a similar format with an area map, a Table of Contents, an Introduction by the editor(s), and an About the contributors.
In NAIROBI NOIR, we have 3 Parts. Part I - The Hunters; Part II - The Hunted and Part III - The Herders. Fourteen short stories are included by authors Winfred Kiunga, Kevin Mwachiro, Kinyanjui Kombani, Troy Onyango, Makena Onjerika, Peter Kimani, Faith Oneya, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, Caroline Mose, Rasna Warah, J.E. Sibi-Okumu, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Stanley Gazemba, and Ngumi Kibera.
My favorite parts of the anthology are always the map and the Introduction, which sets the tone for the area we are about to enter. Peter Kimani, in his introduction, tells us that Nairobi Noir is an “act of excavation, rediscovering the city’s ossified past and infusing life to preserve it for future generations.”
The ‘About the Authors’ section is always interesting and informative.

All the stories are ‘sad’, but “Say You are not my Son’”by Faith Oneya, is particularly sad and desperate.
“For our Mothers” made me cry, as did “Plot Ten”.
All the stories concern daily life in different areas of Nairobi, some written with a mix of patois.
My words include —- dirt, garbage, smells, casual death and violence, long-suffering women, abused children, hunger, irresponsible men, cruelty, corrupt officials, casual rape, open sewers, inequality —- an urban jungle.
If there is beauty or love or justice in Nairobi, it was not portrayed in this anthology.

“History has strange ways of announcing itself to the present, whether conceived in comforting darkness or blinding light. It can manifest with the gentleness of a bean cracking out of its pod, making music in its fall. Even when such seed falls into fertile soil, it still wriggles from the tug of the earth, stretching a green hand for uplift.”

I really enjoyed this one for a lot of reasons and this quote seems to sum up a lot of the plot strands. I’ve been reading a lot in Africa these days, experiencing the colonial experience from both the side of the colonized and the colonizers. This one was even more convoluted because the main protagonist is neither, at least in Kenya. Babu is also a victim of imperialism, however, as he is a Punjabi imported by the British to help build the railroad in Kenya with promise of making a fortune and returning home. Unfortunately, “home” goes away with the partitioning of British Punjab between India and Pakistan. So there’s that historical strand of an Imperial power shifting people and ethnic groups around, playing them off each other, and then abandoning them after their work is done.

Then there is the personal side of history, where the secrets and shenanigans of the grandfathers and fathers come back to haunt the children. Or as they say in Kenya, “Majuto ni mjukuu...children would pay for the sins of their forebearers.”

Finally, the Jakaranda’s patio and lounge sounded very, very similar to the Lake Nakuru lodge I stayed at during a photo safari several years ago. The descriptions were so similar that I did a quick check to see if I could find any evidence that there was some connection between the two.

As to the writing, this multi-generational novel was oft times confusing and seemed to meander and eventually putter out in a dramatic but not very well fleshed out finale. Like much of the books published these days, it probably could have used some stronger editorial influence and guidance. This was more evident at the end than in the beginning and middle sections, so maybe there was a deadline that caused Kimani to wrap it up a little too abruptly. In the end, I still enjoyed much of the book and especially appreciated yet another view into the development of Kenya as a country. If that is something that interests you, I would invite you to check this one out.

“The gigantic snake was a train and the year was 1901, an age when white men were still discovering the world for their kings and queens in faraway lands. So when the railway superintendent, or simply Master as he was known to many, peered out the window of his first class cabin that misty morning, his mind did not register the dazzled villagers who dropped their hoes and took off, or led their herds away from the grazing fields in sheer terror of the strange creature cutting through their land Neither did Master share in the 'tamasha' boom from across the coaches where British, Indian and African workers - all in their respective compartments – were celebrating the train's maiden voyage. Master was absorbed by the landscape that looked remarkably different from how he remembered it from his previous trip.” p 2

This historical novel written by Kenyan author Peter Kimani, depicts several key points in Kenyan history. Time periods alternate between the telling of the building of the railroad under the sometimes brutal colonial white rule, to the early 60's when Kenya became a self-ruling nation under the “Big Man”.

We see the stories of African workers , the white master in charge of building the railroad named Ian McDonald , a white missionary John Turnbull, , and the Indians who came to Kenya to work on the railway, and who stayed on, often because their country Punjabi disappeared into India and Pakistan and they had no country to return if they wanted to leave.

Ian McDonald, denied a title from the queen for his accomplishment of punching through the railway, is instead given his choice of a thousand acres of land. He chooses a prime location, between two natural wonders. His estate is known as Jakaranda ; and it evolves through many incarnations – from baronial estate and ambitious farmland, to wildlife preserve, hunting preserve for rich whites, and a night club where we see a musician grandson or one of the original railway workers .

As the estate changes, so also do the people in the story until their stories are not separate but intertwine in often secret ways.

Overall, I enjoyed this story although I did find the shifting time frames a bit confusing. Author Kimani paints an interesting story of the history of the country and the people. I definitely walk away with more knowledge of the region and respect for its multi-cultural past.½

This is another book I'm going to have to set aside for now. Hopefully I'll finish it soon but as of right now it's not doing "it" for me. I can't seem to get into it and I keep having to reread passages because my mind drifts away from the story quite easily. I thought I'd like it because I saw the blurb from Mat Johnson; I loved his satirical "Loving Day" and for some reason I thought this novel was going to be a biting satire as well. It's not. It's a somewhat slow, somewhat jumpy historical fiction so far. The writing is okay but nothing special. Maybe I'll be in the mood for it at another time.

Although I really enjoyed Kimani's writing, I had a hard time really getting into this one. It seemed like the narrative would shift focus to a new character each time I was really getting engaged with one, so that took a lot of the momentum away as I kept reading. And although the story was interesting, it also got more and more predictable, and seemingly slower, as it progressed. All told, I imagine I might have taken weeks to finish it and kept wandering away from it, but for the fact that I'd taken it along on a weekend trip and didn't really have other choices. I do have a feeling that that would have hurt the reading, though--the number of characters and their relations were hard enough to keep track of even with having read the book over only the course of a few days, so I imagine putting it down for a week could have led to my not finishing it at all.

All that said, I did enjoy Kimani's writing, so I probably would try another one of his books. I just don't know that I could recommend this one, which kept losing steam as it progressed.

A novel about the English and the Indians in the building of the railroad in Kenya.

Peter Kimani was born in Kenya and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Houston. He now teaches at a university in Kenya and has published other fiction and poetry.

Colonization of Kenya by the British around 1900 brought in workers from the Indian subcontinent to build a railroad from the coast to the Rift Valley. British administrators interacted with technicians from India as well as African laborers. Racial lines were sharply drawn and hostilities were created. The story of building the railroad is framed with events involving the children and grandchildren of the original builders in the 1960s as Kenya gained its independence.

Dance of the Jakaranda is a man’s book. The male characters and their relationships are central. The men in the book frequently behave in degrading ways with women, as they probably did in that time and place. More troubling, Kimani finds repeated opportunities for describing women as sexual objects. I found this practice very alienating.

While I usually appreciate Akashic books for making available a wide range of authors who are people of color, I do not recommend this book.

In Dance of the Jakaranda Peter Kimani constructs a model of Imperial Britain and its administration (plunder, despoliation, usurpation, oppression) of what was once called the British East African Protectorate, and is now called Kenya. It features an insecure and ambitious British grandee who controls, or, we should say lords it over, the hundreds of workers imported to build a railroad from Mombasa to the interior. The narrative follows the exploits and misadventures of a handful of characters, and creaks a bit as it tries to bear up under the pressure of betrayal, misunderstanding, and the larger forces of prejudice and political upheaval.

Three generations of a Punjabi family figure prominently here: the grandfather is one of the artisans imported from across the Indian Ocean to Kenya to help build the railroad as the 20th Century dawns. The middle generation is not known in the story, for a couple of reasons, but the third generation reaps the unfortunate results of the sins of their forebears. For me these characters lacked depth; they apparently stand as totems or emblems of geopolitical actors: the old Englishman with his crippling doubts and weaknesses, least entitled to hold the position he comes into; the young besotted singer and musician, who we’re to believe inspires widespread protests and dies a political martyr’s death.

The difficulties I found stem from a failure to put the reader on site with any effectiveness. The twists of the plot gain momentum toward the end, a momentum flowing from history, but came across to me as quite a bit less than inevitable - even a little forced. The strength of this book lies in its stark depiction of the human cost of colonialism. The construct of everyone’s tied-together fates is inadequate support for the themes developed.

I found this an unrewarding read.

How great to have a novel of Kenyan's history written by a Kenyan. This one is told from the prospective of the men (both the British overseers and the Kenyan and Indian workers) building the railroad from the coast to Lake Victoria. It's filled with well drawn characters and is a joy to read.

Set in Kenya, this story centers around the building of a railroad linking Lake Victoria to the Indian Ocean. The British are colonizing Kenya and bring in Indian laborers to work on the railroad. Thus the lives of three individuals intersect. Edward McDonald is the man in charge of the railroad; Babu comes from India with his new wife, Fatima, to work; Reverend Turnbull is a white preacher whose aim is to make Christians of the natives. Their story and the story of their grandchildren, Rajan and Mariam is told with multiple story lines.

This is a classic story of European colonization of Africa. The British hold the power and the guns, but are often confounded by the resources and culture of the natives. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in the story but each character is well-rounded, capable of great good and capable of evil.

Although they are unaware, Rajan and Mariam are actually the descendents of Turnbull and McDonald and Rajan is the grandson of Fatima. The story is set in Nakuru, the city that develops because of the railroad and especially Jakaranda, a resort which was once the mansion home of McDonald.

The story had everything I enjoy: exotic location, historical elements, interesting characters. Sometimes the skipping back and forth in time was confusing and there really were too many words in the native language.