Books come into your life for a reason. My first encounter with By the Sea was seven years ago. I got roped into a biographical research exercise conducted by my sister. We started by reading widely to see how African writers spoke to contemporary times. Among the books recommended for background reading was Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel By the…
A book belonging to Anya, my sister and has been in the library at home (my mother bookshelf) for a couple of years. I saw it one day, never knew about it or about the author. “The Alchemist, such an interesting title”, I decided to give it a read…your gold is always buried beneath your feet…agh boy.
There is an old expression. “If you want to hide something from an African, hide it in a book”. The insulting stereotype aside, books do not pull rank in the average Kenyan home. With advent of digital media, good old fashion reading is quickly going out of style. As a result, it is rarely stated…