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Clough (history, U. of Northern Colorado) analyzes 13 personal accounts by Kenyans in order to make a case for not only their historical value, but their role in the struggle to define the importance of Mau Mau within Kenyan historiography and politics. He argues that the recollections of the authors, whose experiences ranged from organizing the secret movement, to supplying the guerillas, to active fighting, to resistance in the British detention camps, serve to refute both the British and Kenyan versions of the revolt. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Mrs. Queen's Chump is the military memoir of a young man who, naively acquiescing to a period of "adventure" after leaving boarding school, soon found himself enmeshed in the agonies of subjugated peoples caught in the turmoil of a collapsing British Empire and demanding restoration of their dignity and rightful human freedoms. Left to deal as best he could with his own transition from boy to man - somewhat before PTSD became a recognizable quantity - he realized as a born Canadian citizen he might easily have avoided service in Britain's army - but he had committed himself, so entered with his eyes open and became a keen observer. In stories that are sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, yet somehow tinged with the sadness that always jolts the loss of innocence, the author tells of experiences as an infantry officer fighting in the jungles of both Kenya and Malaya. They are incident of another time, yet hauntingly contemporary - soldiers sent to far off corners of the world to secure the privileges of tough and ambitious colonizers, themselves champions of Empire (no matter whose) who feel full entitlement over both people and resources. Bring up the troops! Despite clear dangers, thousands of bright-eyed and brainwashed young Brits whose invincible dads had recently thrashed Hitler were now, by the late 1940's and 1950's, keen to do their bit, to head abroad and "have a go" at running the Empire. They sallied forth into what they thought a halcyon sunset in need of some burnishing, but in reality dazzling in its madness. By the end their military weight and wallop proved insufficient to address the anger of millions of very "restless natives" - or to douse the frenzies of the likes of Idi Amin. The initial disease was Empire Myopia. Within a short time, and like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, those who had come to impose order themselves succumbed to an Idi-like dementia that tumbled the whole wretched Empire to its knees. About the Author Born in Vancouver, Canada, Jeremy Hespeler-Boultbee started school in Australia, continued in the United States and Canada, and graduated from high school in Britain - this last giving rise to the military service described in these pages. A young and insightful officer, whose views often ran counter to those expressed by his superiors, he was in a unique position to observe the collapsing British Empire. Later, as a journalist living in Lisbon, Portugal, he was again witness - this time to the revolutionary shake-up and demise of another of Europe's entrenched old orders. Hespeler-Boultbee has worked on major assignments in Canada, the United States, Portugal and numerous countries in Africa. In addition to writing, he is an architectural historian specializing in Renaissance Portugal. He considers "home" to be Victoria, British Columbia, Barrancos, Portugal and Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.
Born in 1938 in rural Kenya, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o came of age in the shadow of World War II, amidst the terrible bloodshed in the war between the Mau Mau and the British. The son of a man whose four wives bore him more than a score of children, young Ngũgĩ displayed what was then considered a bizarre thirst for learning, yet it was unimaginable that he would grow up to become a world-renowned novelist, playwright, and critic. In Dreams in a Time of War, Ngũgĩ deftly etches a bygone era, bearing witness to the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war. Speaking to the human right to dream even in the worst of times, this rich memoir of an African childhood abounds in delicate and powerful subtleties and complexities that are movingly told.
In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa Thiong'o Pdf
Renowned novelist, poet, playwright, and literary critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was a student at a prestigious, British-run boarding school near Nairobi when the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty gripped his country. While he enjoyed scouting trips and chess tournaments, his family home was razed to the ground and his brother, a member of the insurgency, was captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. But Ngũgĩ could not escape history, and eventually found himself jailed after a run in with the forces of colonialism. Ngũgĩ richly and poignantly evokes the experiences that would transform him into a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass to us all. A winning celebration of the implacable determination of youth and the power of hope, here is a searing account of the history of a man—and the story of a nation.
In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o Pdf
The second volume of memoirs from the renowned Kenyan novelist, poet and playwright covers his high school years at the end of British colonial rule in Africa, during the Mau Mau Uprising. 15,000 first printing.
InDreams in a Time of War,Ngugi wa Thiong'o paints a mesmerising portrait of a young boy's experiences in an African nation in flux. Beginning in the late 1930s, this moving and entertaining memoir describes Ngugi's day-to-day life as the fifth child of his father's third wife in a family that included twenty-four children born to four different mothers. Against the backdrop of World War II, which affected the lives of Africans under British colonial rule in unexpected ways, Ngugi spent his childhood as the apple of his mother's eye before attending school to slake what was then considered a bizarre thirst for learning. As he grows up, the wider political and social changes occurring in Kenya at this time begin to impinge on the boy's life in both inspiring and frightening ways. Through telling the story of his grandparents and parents and of his brothers' involvement on different sides of the violent Mau Mau uprising, Ngugi wa Thiong'o takes us back to a momentous period in Kenyan history, deftly etching a bygone era, capturing the landscape, the people and their culture, and the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war. This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN's Writers in Translation programme supported by Bloomberg. English PEN exists to promote literature and its understanding, uphold writers' freedoms around the world, campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and promote the friendly co-operation of writers and free exchange of ideas.
Prior to and after Kenya's independence, this biography recounts a Kenyan police officer's daily experiences, including armed combat in the bush, the technical operations in Nairobi, and the battle of wits against the South African intelligence services in Lesotho and Botswana. Exploring the intrigue and brutality of the officer's position, the book provides insight into security force operations.
Fitz de Souza's memoirs recount a political story woven through a personal account of migration and integration, with both the hardship and hope that this entailed. His account takes us from Asia to Africa and then to Europe before returning to East Africa where he lived for most of his life. It gives a flavour of lifestyles, moral codes, and politics as they were in early 20th century India, 1930s Zanzibar, and Europe after the war. Most importantly, it takes us to that formative time when the foundations were laid for an independent Kenya, giving the reader a window into those last decades of colonial Africa and those early years of the new nation. The transition was not a peaceful one. It was not a time when the "rule of law" was applied in an undiluted sense. The book gives the inside story of the colonial government's handling of the independence movement including the trial of the Kapenguria six, Jomo Kenyatta and fellow nationalists, and Operation Anvil, the round-up of the Mau Mau. It explains how agreement was eventually reached and compromises found, in particular through the Lancaster House conferences, that enabled a new country to be founded. It portrays the politicians of the time, before independence and after, some hugely idealistic, some charismatic, and others forever enigmatic, many of whose lives in those formative years ended in tragedy. Hilary Ng'weno, a highly regarded Kenyan journalist and editor, provided invaluable support: "I interviewed him many times, so that the interviews, which were recorded, could help him in writing his memoirs. That exercise was an eye opener for me. I had never met an elderly person who could remember so many details about his past. He was remembering personalities and events of the years before and soon after Kenya's independence in 1963 and Fitz wasn't just remembering events touching on his life. He was remembering Kenya's history of which he was one of the great makers. The story you read in this book is not just about Fitz. It is a story about the foundations of the Kenya nation. And it is for that reason that I feel very strongly that Fitz Remedios Santana de Souza will forever remain a legend for many Kenyans." David Steel, The Rt Hon. the Lord Steel of Aikwood, a close personal friend, commented: "This is a remarkable book, beautifully written and describing in graphic detail the author's experience of the transition of Kenya from violence-torn colony to independence. Fitz de Souza speaks with authority as one active at the centre from lawyer to Jomo Kenyatta to Deputy Speaker in the Nairobi Parliament. His sketches of the participants are quite breath-taking and moving. His is a life lived to the full - I could not put it down and read it all in just two sittings." In her introduction, Victoria Brittain, former foreign correspondent for The Guardian in East Africa, writes: "Fitz de Souza is a man of memories from his unique insider/outsider status in Kenya's struggle for independence from Britain and the early days of its uncharted path under Jomo Kenyatta. A vanished world of optimism and idealism rooted in Goa, Zanzibar, Kenya's Rift Valley, London's Inns of Court, and the dying days of British colonial rule in Kenya is unveiled in his subtle understated book. De Souza was Deputy Speaker of the first Parliament of independent Kenya, a trusted friend to Kenyatta and of all the aspiring politicians of the moment, many of whom he knew well from the prisons and courtrooms of violent pre-independence days. He was a man who in those heady days of independent Kenya could have had any ministry he wanted, and was offered any stretches of farmland he wanted by Kenyatta. Unlike so many others he wanted none. The life he chose was a very different one of idealism, matter-of-fact self-sacrifice and extraordinary hard work."
"This is an interesting book written by an objective observer who has witnessed the gradual decline of a country that showed so much promise" -- Dries Brunt, Citizen Originally published in 1999, Kenya Cowboy has been updated and re-released with a new analytical postscript. This is a stylish, first-hand account of Britain's futile and often tragic struggle to retain its rich stake in East Africa in the face of the relentless Mau Mau uprising. Previous to the social unrest that began in December 2007, which has blighted its apparent democracy, Kenya was hailed as a mature and stable post-colonial independent state. However, after 40 years of rigged elections, underlying problems have finally manifested themselves with thousands of aggrieved citizens taking to the streets. Unlike many of its neighbors during the period of transition from colony to independent state, Kenya did not collapse into a state of anarchy. But the Mau Mau uprising hangs like a dark cloud over this evolution. Their savage and brutal brand of terrorism was unknown to many--with the insurgents themselves hailed as heroes and celebrated with pride on Kenyatta Day every year since. Here, Peter Hewitt, a former police officer at the time of the uprising, offers another side to the story. He gives a balanced assessment of the implications of Mau Mau as well as vivid and shocking reconstruction of events that took place. He seeks both to give a human perspective and to shed light on the darker areas of the time. It is a book that is filled with revelations, many damning. Peter Hewitt was born in Windsor with the Great Depression looming. At age 18, following an MoD engineering apprenticeship, he was conscripted and served for eight years in the Fleet Air Arm. Upon release he entered Colonial Police Service, a career change that took him first to Kenya, followed by tours in Cyprus and Nyasaland. His police career concluded with a nine-year spell in the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary. Retuning to England in 1972 he took up an appointment with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where a succession of postings took him to diplomatic missions in Sierra Leone, East Berlin (GDR), Guyana and Lisbon--until a surfeit of 'foreign parts' prompted him and his wife to settle in north London.
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji Pdf
Giller Prize-winner M.G. Vassanji’s The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is a haunting novel of corruption and regret that brings to life the complexity and turbulence of Kenyan society in the last five decades. Rich in sensuous detail and historical insight, this is a powerful story of passionate betrayals and political violence, racial tension and the strictures of tradition, told in elegant, assured prose. The novel begins in 1953, with eight-year-old Vikram Lall a witness to the celebrations around the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, just as the Mau Mau guerilla war for independence from Britain begins to gain strength. In a land torn apart by idealism, doubt, political upheaval and terrible acts of violence, Vic and his sister Deepa must find their place among a new generation. Neither colonists nor African, neither white nor black, the Indian brother and sister find themselves somewhere in between in their band of playmates: Bill and Annie, British children, and Njoroge, an African boy. These are the relationships that will shape the rest of their lives. We follow Vikram through the changes in East African society, the immense promise of the fifties and sixties. But when that hope is betrayed by the corruption and violence of the following decades, Vic is drawn into the Kenyatta government’s orbit of graft and power-broking. Njoroge, his childhood friend, can abandon neither the idealism of his youth nor his love for Vic’s sister Deepa. But neither the idealism of the one nor the passive cynicism of the other can avert the tragedies that await them. The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is a profound and careful examination of one man’s search for his place in the world, with themes that have run through Vassanji’s work: the nature of community in a volatile society, the relations between colony and colonizer, and the inescapable presence of the past. It is also, finally, a deeply personal book speaking to the people who are in the in-between.
Widens the debate about the Mau Mau revolt and adds an African voice to the examination and interpretation of an important event in African history. Maloba examines the part played by Mau Mau in Kenyan nationalism and its independence movement. Wunyabari Maloba is Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of the African Studies Program, University of Delaware North America: Indiana U Press
Mau Mau's Daughter by Wambui Waiyaki Otieno,Cora Ann Presley Pdf
The autobiography of a woman who was a Kenyan nationalist fighter for the Mau Maus and later politician in Nairobi. Descended from Maasai refugees, Kikuyu frontier settlers, and autochthonous Dorobo hunter-gatherers, she tells the story of her ancestors, her childhood, how she got involved in the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s, the later story of her involvement with the Kenya African National Union, her marriage to Nairobi lawyer Silvano Melea Otieno, and the controversy over his burial, which was the impetus for the writing of this book. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
