Kwani? Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary with Award Winning Authors
Kwani? made literature cool by publishing a string of contemporary writers whose work is emblematic of our lives (in books that have dope cover art). The network of writers affiliated with Kwani? Trust range from its founder and 2002 Caine Prize Winner, Binyavanga Wainaina to 2013 Kwani? Manuscript Prize winner, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.
Between November 27th to November 30th, you can look forward to readings, a book party, with a visual art retrospective of Wangeci Mutu’s work, and so much more. Nigeria’s celebrated writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, will be in town to deliver a lecture at Nairobi university as well as introduce her third book, Americanah, to Kenyan readers. Kenya’s 2003 Caine Prize winner, Yvonne Owuor, will also be speaking at Kenyatta university about her work.
Both authors will be present at Kwani?’s book party on November 29th where Owuor’s first novel, Dust, will be launched. Here’s what she had to say about her work to date.
Your Caine Prize Winning Story (2003) Weight of Whispers and your debut novel Dust both feature history heavily: Why is that an important feature in those works?
I find that truth and reality are most often stranger than fiction. When you study the life story of human beings and choices made that lead to particular moments that fall into the category of ‘history’ chances are that what you learn can cause you to tumble off the edge of your seat in shock, awe, puzzlement and wonder. My stories sip from this rich human repository, and also cater to my obsession with guessing reasons for human choices and their consequences —particularly the bad ones. Moreover, as ex-slave and ancient North African playwright Publius Terentius Afer so eternally apt puts it: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto“— I am a human being, I consider nothing human is alien to me. History offers such incredible signposts to ‘seeing’ the human spirit and its possible destination. I like reading portions of the map of human vagaries, and learning its geography. That is what I explore and seek in a text.
What parts of Kenya’s re-written history were interesting to learn when researching information for Dust?
Oh there is so, so much. For example, when I was in the national archives my heart would be racing eighty five percent of the time. I would want to leap out of my seat and grab the nearest Kenyan and shout (or whisper), “Did you know this?” There is so much there. So much in private archives as well. An example. Field reports of assorted Colonial Officers. What a rich knowledge vein. So many notions of the mundane technicalities of nation building. But beyond caricatures of the Colonial male you realise that these were mostly young men living far away from home, who lived as (flawed) idealists consecrated to a big idea—however hair-brained it was- in total service to their ‘people and nation’. In this era of selfish self-interests and
‘Uta do?’ mentalities, I had to wonder what values and sense of nation motivated this service to an ideal? Why do we not even expect the hint of such values among ‘true Kenyan’ officials? Their texts also suggested a retrieved memory of a nation’s becoming. It humanized the Kenya ‘project’ for me by offering a practical chronicle of a pulsating, vivid, whole Kenya, comfortable with its diversities and hopes.
Dust is primarily concerned with post-independence Kenya years.
For more info on Kwani?’s 10th anniversary, log onto: www.kwani.org, Kwani Trust on Facebook, @kwanitrust or #kwanitrust on Twitter.
