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Gusii Misiri Migration, Rainmaking, Shrines and Modern Divination
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LAST ARROW IN THE QUIVER by JOHN GATHATWA
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In colonial Kenya, Gatete wa Miano, a squatter’s son, joins the Mau Mau revolt, risking everything to reclaim his people’s land and freedom. Through fierce battles in the forest and months of brutal detention, Gatete’s journey captures the courage of a people defying oppression, even in the face of betrayal by native loyalists. Driven by a deep reverence for their homeland and faith, these fighters fought not for hate or revenge, but for a future unbound by colonial chains.
This gripping story honors Kenya’s unsung heroes, reminding us that true independence demands more than political freedom—it calls for justice, dignity, and the fulfillment of their hard-won hopes.
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SHADOWS OF MAU MAU WAR by John Gathatwa
Set against the turbulent final years of colonial Kenya, Shadows of Mau Mau War is a powerful story of sacrifice, resilience, and the unbreakable determination of one man to secure a future for his family. Beneath the dark shadows of the Aberdare ranges, where fear, betrayal, and war gripped the land, Gatete wa Miano rises as a quiet pillar of strength in a nation struggling to be born.
As the Mau Mau conflict tears through villages and families, Gatete must navigate impossible choices, protect those he loves, and carry the immense burden of responsibility placed upon the African man during a time of upheaval. Every step he takes, every sacrifice he makes, becomes part of a legacy that will shape generations to come.
Rich in history, emotion, and cultural depth, Shadows of Mau Mau War is more than a story of war — it is a moving portrait of courage, family, identity, and the enduring human spirit in the face of darkness.
NYANDARUA FOLKLORE; STORIES OF AGĨKŨYŨ by JOHN GATHATWA
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Wisdom of the Elders Personal Reflections of Over 70 Kenyans who Have Lived Through Changing Times by Susan Wakhungu Githuku and Bobby Pall
"'Wisdom of the elders' presents conversations with over 70 elders of diverse background, education level, race and gender. One is none other than immediate former President Emilio Mwai Kibaki. Another is the widow of former freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi, while another is the grandmother of President Barrack Hussein.
Others are normal Kenyans living in villages, with no claim to fame or stature.
However, all those profiled have lived three score ten years and more and in the words of the Bible, have reached the age of wisdom.
Discussing how life was then and how it is today, their disparate views will inform and resonate as they provide a veritable history lesson."--Dust jacket flap.
Rules of the Wild by Francesca Marciano
Brief Summary
A mesmerizing novel of love and nostalgia set in the vast spaces of contemporary East Africa.
Romantic, often resonantly ironic, moving and wise, Rules of the Wild transports us to a landscape of unsurpassed beauty even as it gives us a sharp-eyed portrait of a closely knit tribe of cultural outsiders: the expatriates living in Kenya today.
Challenged by race, by class, and by a longing for home, here are "safari boys" and Samaritans, reporters bent on their own fame, travelers who care deeply about elephants but not at all about the people of Africa. They all know each other. They meet at dinner parties, they sleep with each other, they argue about politics and the best way to negotiate their existence in a place where they don't really belong.
At the center is Esmé, a beautiful young woman of dazzling ironies and introspections, who tells us her story in a voice both passionate and self-deprecating. Against a paradoxical backdrop of limitless physical freedom and escalating civil unrest, Esmé struggles to make sense of her own place in Africa and of her feelings for the two men there whom she loves--Adam, a second-generation Kenyan who is the first to show her the wonders of her adopted land, and Hunter, a British journalist sickened by its horrors.
Rules of the Wild evokes the worlds of Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, and Ernest Hemingway. It explores unforgettably our infinite desire for a perfect elsewhere, for love and a place to call home. It is an astonishing literary debut.
Peeling Back the Mask by Miguna Miguna
Peeling Back the Mask is an insider's account from one of the Kenyan Prime Minister's former adviser detailing instances of corruption and fraud at the highest level of Kenyan government.
With massive online and media coverage, this book has become the spearhead of a national campaign to aspire to a new corruption-free Kenya.
This remarkable book generated twenty thousand hits on the publisher website within hours of its announcement and Google reports Miguna Miguna is in the top five subjects searched online in Africa.
The trial of Dedan Kimathi by Ngugi wa Thiongo and Micere Githae Mugo
The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written in collaboration with Micere Githae-Mugo, is Ngugi’s response to colonialist writings about the Mau-Mau movement, which traditionally depicted the movement and its leader, Dedan Kimathi, as mentally unbalanced and vicious.
Ngugi and his collaborator choose to counter this image with a portrait of Kimathi as a man of great courage and commitment. This was how he was seen by many of the peasants and laborers of Kenya.
Dash before Dusk: A Slave Descendants Journey in Freedom by Joe Khamisi
Brief Summary
Dash before Dusk: A slave descendant's journey in freedom is an account of the life and times of Joe Khamisi, a Kenyan slave descendant whose ancestors were taken captive by Arab traders from Nyasaland and Tanganyika, rescued at sea by the British, and settled at Rabai, a slave encampment along the East African coast.
Khamisi, a former journalist, diplomat and politician, narrates the significant contributions former slaves and their descendants made in the transformation of Kenya into an independent state and their continuing struggle for recognition.
Moving the Maasai A Colonial Misadventure by Lotte Hughes
This is the scandalous story of how the Maasai people of Kenya lost the best part of their land to the British in the 1900s.
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Britains Gulag The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya by Caroline Elkins
Britain fought in the Second World War to save the world from fascism. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom.
The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of one-and-a half-million - to hold them in camps or confine them in villages ringed with barbed wire - and to portray them as sub-human savages.
From 1952 until the end of the war in 1960 tens of thousands of detainees - and possibly a hundred thousand or more - died from the combined effects of exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality.
Until now these events have remained untold, largely because the British government in Kenya destroyed most of its files. For the last eight years Caroline Elkins has conducted exhaustive research to piece together the story, unearthing reams of documents and interviewing several hundred Kikuyu survivors.
Britain's Gulag reveals what happened inside Kenya's detention camps, as well as the efforts to conceal the truth.
Now, for the first time, we can understand the full savagery of the Mau Mau war and the ruthless determination with which Britain sought to control its empire.
Indians in Kenya The Politics of Diaspora
Brief Summary
Working as merchants, skilled tradesmen, clerks, lawyers, and journalists, Indians formed the economic and administrative middle class in colonial Kenya. In general, they were wealthier than Africans, but were denied the political and economic privileges that Europeans enjoyed. Moreover, despite their relative prosperity, Indians were precariously positioned in Kenya. Africans usually viewed them as outsiders, and Europeans largely considered them subservient. Indians demanded recognition on their own terms.
Indians in Kenya chronicles the competing, often contradictory, strategies by which the South Asian diaspora sought a political voice in Kenya from the beginning of colonial rule in the late 1890s to independence in the 1960s.
Indians’ intellectual, economic, and political connections with South Asia shaped their understanding of their lives in Kenya. Sana Aiyar investigates how the many strands of Indians’ diasporic identity influenced Kenya’s political leadership, from claiming partnership with Europeans in their mission to colonize and "civilize” East Africa to successful collaborations with Africans to battle for racial equality, including during the Mau Mau Rebellion.
She also explores how the hierarchical structures of colonial governance, the material inequalities between Indians and Africans, and the radicalized political discourses that flourished in both colonial and postcolonial Kenya limited the success of alliances across racial and class lines. Aiyar demonstrates that only by examining the ties that bound Indians to worlds on both sides of the Indian Ocean can we understand how Kenya came to terms with its South Asian minority.
"
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Looters and Grabbers by Joe Khamisi
This book is about unbridled corruption, bribery and scandalous financial skullduggery in one of Africa's most promising countries, Kenya.
It is a narrative of money-laundering, mega scandals, and international wheeler-dealing, and describes how Mafia-like lobbyists have been devouring the country's resources with blatant impunity over four regimes since independence in 1963.
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Dedan Kimathi The Real Story
Brief Summary
"To most people, Dedan Kimathi, the man who led the Mau Mau movement in Kenya’s forests in the 1950s to win freedom from the British Empire, has remained a shadowy and enigmatic figure.
Attempts to portray his heroic and fascinating life have produced varying results, ranging from historical distortion to artistic idealism.
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Mukami Kimathi Mau Mau Women Freedom by Alice Wairimu Nderitu
In 1964, a newly independent Kenya was facing the uphill task of reconstructing herself into an African State. That reconstruction was called "Africanisation”.
As part of the Africanisation policy, my father, Vincent Nderitu, was posted to Sasumua Dam in Kinangop to take over from the British superintendents who were leaving the country.
Not long after he had arrived, he asked the foreman, Harun Musungu, to find out where he could buy milk. That was how he met Mukami Kimathi. My father was thunderstruck. Back home in Tetu, Nyeri, his home and Mukami’s were within a walking distance. My father knew her as a legend. She was a Mau Mau heroine, the wife of Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi.
My father began treating Mukami like an elder sister, fixing her fences and installing a water tank for her among other duties. When I was growing up, Mukami was the auntie through whose home we passed on our way from school; the one who made my brothers and I porridge and gave us red plums. She was not a blood relative, but we always thought she was.
Mukami and her children, Nyambura and Waceke, would often come to our home in the afternoons and I would read the newspaper to her haltingly. She encouraged me saying; "When you grow up, you will write as well as you read. One day, you should write my karugano ( story) because what is not written is forgotten.”
She wanted me to remind Kenyans to take care of the country the Mau Mau fought for.
Her lowest point was the 2007-2008 post-election violence and often said: "Because we fought the colonialists, Kenyans now have arrow roots, sweet potatoes, bananas and yam on the table. But instead of eating, they are fighting! I wish this generation of Kenyans from all ethnic communities would rally as we did and this time emerge with, instead of independence like we did, national unity!
In her story, Mukami shows us who Dedan Kimathi was as a father and husband. Her experiences provide an important complement to existing written records on Kenya’s history.
Mukami Kimathi’s prophesy that I would write her karugan is now a reality. The book, Mukami Kimathi: Mau Mau Freedom Fighter, was launched at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi last evening. She was also proved right on another front; my sister Consolata Wakonyo became a pilot.
Quest for Liberty by Gikonyo Kiano
When the history of Kenya is told, a number of people feature prominently. One such person is Dr Julius Gikonyo Kiano, a politician who put Kenya before self. Dr Kiano was the first Kenyan to earn a doctorate degree, and the first African to teach at the Royal Technical College, now University of Nairobi.
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Quest for Liberty represents the acme of Dr Kiano's life as a politician. He was among those who negotiated for a new constitution at Lancaster House Conference just before Independence. As a dedicated minister in both Kenyatta and Moi cabinets, he implemented various notable programmes such as the Africanisation initiative that set the country on the path to economic independence.
The famous airlifts to America that saw hundreds of young Kenyans enrol in universities in the US was his brainchild together with the late Tom Mboya.
Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson
In "a gripping narrative that is all but impossible to put down" (Joseph C. Miller), Histories of the Hanged exposes the long-hidden colonial crimes of the British in Kenya.
This groundbreaking work tells how the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau between 1952 and 1960 dominated the final bloody decade of imperialism in East Africa.
Using extraordinary new evidence, David Anderson puts the colonial government on trial with eyewitness testimony from over 800 court cases and previously unseen archives.
His research exonerates the Kikuyu rebels; hardly the terrorists they were thought to be; and reveals the British to be brutal aggressors in a "dirty war" that involved leaders at the highest ranks of the British government.
This astonishing piece of scholarship portrays a teetering colonial empire in its final phase; employing whatever military and propaganda methods it could to preserve an order that could no longer hold.
Nairobi then and now 50 years by Stephen and Bhavna Mills
Brief Summary
This book is a window into Nairobi's past and a reminder of its present. The transformation we see is uneven - some things and places have evolved unrecognizably, while others remain constant. Nairobi is a place of great change. Rapid development and outward expansion is ever reshaping the landscape. Kenya and the UK have been partners in Nairobi's evolutionary journey throughout.
Not just government, but also in terms of trade and investment, technology, security, knowledge, and people. The Kenya-UK partnership will continue the journey down this road to the future, towards achieving the Kenyan Government's Vision 2030 and beyond.
50 years in the future many places shown in this book could be long gone. While a few special old places might remain, our vision for the 2063 edition of this book is an ultra-modern Nairobi, a major interchange of the globalized and interconnected world. And a place where we continue to learn from the lessons of the past, as we focus on the promise of the future.
Kikuyu District by Paul Sullivan
Brief Summary
Francis Hall's letters are among the earliest colonial record of daily life in British East Africa, now modern day Kenya. In 1892 Hall was posted to Fort Smith with orders to build 150 miles of road, to re-supply caravans between the coast and Uganda and to keep the peace between the Kikuyu and the Maasai.
His was a hard life in difficult, dangerous conditions and every day was an adventure. He was gored by a rhino and mauled by a leopard, which he strangled with his rifle, and survived bush surgery and frequent bouts of malaria.
While on leave in England he married Bee Russell, a colleague's sister, and they set up house together in Fort Smith. As the railway line approached, so the early European settlers started to arrive. But the railway was to change everything, and when Nairobi was established on their doorstep at the turn of the century, Fort Smith became redundant.
The government first moved the Halls to Machakos and then back to Kikuyuland to establish a new fort at Mbirri. Six months later Francis Hall was dead from black water fever aged 40. Mbirri was renamed Fort Hall in his memory and today the town is called Muranga. Kikuyu District is a fascinating account of the life of an early colonial administrator and settler.
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