Books

Happy Valley was the name given to the Wanjohi Valley in the Kenya Highlands, where a small community of affluent, hedonistic white expatriates settled between the wars. While Kenya’s early colonial days have been immortalised by farming pioneers like Lord Delamere and Karen Blixen, and the pioneering aviator Beryl Markham, Happy Valley became infamous under the influence of troubled socialite, Lady Idina Sackville, whose life was told in Frances Osborne’s bestselling The Bolter. The era culminated with the notorious murder of the Earl of Erroll in 1941, the investigation of which laid bare the Happy Valley set’s decadence and irresponsibility, chronicled in another bestseller, James Fox’s White Mischief. But what is left now

Meredith artfully weaves together exploration, trade, and geography in a narrative that is both detailed and arresting’ The Economist

A book about Africa, with strong elements of Kuki Gallmann’s “I dreamed of Africa”, combined with the same spirit as Philip Marsden’s “The Bronsky House”. It is the story of a lost world and lost time in Africa. In 1912, a rich young man goes to Northern Rhodesia and builds a most magnificent house in the middle of nowhere on the edge of a lake. He builds this mansion in 2000 acres of land, and eventually has 10,000 employees.;Here, he creates a totally British style of living in the form of libraries, billiard rooms, and cocktail parties. Life changes with the political scene in the 1960s and 70s as tragedy hits the family. The home is abandoned overnight. the author, with the founders’ grandson. drove for nine hours north of Lenaka and found the crumbling mansion. This is the story of the family and their home.

Kenya is rightly famous for its wildlife, and visitors come from all over the world to watch the spectacular animals and birds. But on arrival in Nairobi they get a pleasant bonus, the sight of beautiful flowering trees, shrubs and other plants. Colourful Bourganvillea line the highways; Jacarnda and African Tulip Trees blossom everywhere; and both indigenous and exotic plants provide a riot of colour throughout the country.

This is a simplified and contextualised booklet on the dowry process among the Agikuyu. The author cleverly distils the necessary ingredients of the process and takes the reader through a simple but enlightening dowry process. The outcome of this book is a rich cultural knowledge not just for the Agikuyu but for all those who are keen on appreciating other people’s culture. It’s invaluable for those seeking to be incorporated into the Agikuyu culture through marriage.

Renowned Kenyan artist Abel O’Keragori first heard these traditional tales about the origins of his Kisii community from his grandmother. The Kisii style of intertwining riddles with tales of long ago remain cherished traditions, now preserved in print. Fully researched, and authenticated by Kisii elders and culture experts, these tales explain how the Kisii people first established themselves in Kenya, name their founding fathers, and recount how the Kisii clans inherited the totems of the Zebra, the Leopard, the Hippo, the Elephant and the Baboon. Fully illustrated with Abel’s sketches and stunning full colour paintings, this book also contains traditional Kisii riddles, proverbs, and a glossary.

Karen Blixen’s “Out of Africa” is the lyrical and luminous memoir of Kenya that launched a million tourist trails, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. ‘I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills…Up in this high air you breathed easily …you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.’ From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm, and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs.

In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.

In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth.

In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined—and millions continue to suffer. Provocatively drawing a sharp contrast between African countries that have rejected the aid route and prospered and others that have become aid-dependent and seen poverty increase, Moyo illuminates the way in which overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the “need” for more aid.

They killed my mother.

They took our magic.

They tried to bury us.

Now we rise.

Zélie remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. When different clans ruled – Burners igniting flames, Tiders beckoning waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoning forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, anyone with powers was targeted and killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Only a few people remain with the power to use magic, and they must remain hidden.

Clemantine Wamariya was six years Old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbours began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her sister, Clare, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries, searching for safety — perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.

When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States, where she embarked on another journey, ultimately graduating from Yale. Yet the years of being treated as less than human, Of going hungry and seeing death. could not be erased, She felt at the same time six years old and one hundred years Old.