Situates South African and African-language literature of the late 1880s through the early 1940s in relation to the literature of decolonization that spanned the 1950s through the 1980s, and the contemporary generation of established and emerging continental and diaspora African writers of international renown.
In the fictional East African Kwatee Republic of the 1990s, the dictatorship is about to fall, and the nation's exiles are preparing to return. One of these exiles, a young man named Kalumba, is a graduate student in the United States, where he encounters Mrs.
Unbury our Dead With Song is a novel about four talented Ethiopian musicians - The Diva, The Corporal, the Taliban Man and Miriam, who are competing to see who can sing the best Tizita (popularly referred to as Ethiopian blues). Taking place in an illegal boxing hall in Nairobi, Kenya, the competition is covered by a US educated Kenyan journalist, John Thandi Manfredi, who writes for a popular tabloid, The National Inquisitor. He follows the musicians back to Ethiopia in order to learn more about the Tizita and their lives. As he learns more about the Tizita and the multiple meanings of beauty, he uncovers that behind each of the musicians, there are layered lives and secrets. A love letter to African music, beauty and imagination.
Two cops—one American, one Kenyan—team up to track down a deadly terrorist.It’s December 2007. The Kenyan presidential elections have gotten off to a troubled start, with threats of ethnic violence in the air, and the reports about Barack Obama on the campaign trail in the United States are the subject of newspaper editorials and barstool debates. And Ishmael and O have just gotten their first big break for their new detective agency, Black Star.A mysterious death they’re investigating appears to be linked to the recent bombing of a downtown Nairobi hotel. But local forces start to come down on them to back off the case, and then a startling act of violence tips the scales, setting them off on a round-the-globe pursuit of the shadowy forces behind it all. A thrilling, hard-hitting novel, from the author of Nairobi Heat, a major new crime talent.From the Trade Paperback edition.
It's big news when African peace activist Joshua Hakizimana - famous for saving hundreds of people from Rwandan genocide - accepts a position at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. Then a young girl is found murdered on his doorstep. For local police detective Ishmael, an African American in a white town, it seems like the kind of crime that happens in an area where the Ku Klux Klan still holds rallies. But then he gets a mysterious phone call relaying that the truth is in Nairobi. The call starts a journey through the slums of Nairobi, where oil money rules.
In Mapple-Bluff, einem wohlhabenden Vorort von Madison, Wisconsin, wird eine blonde Frau tot auf der Veranda eines Hauses gefunden, das von einem schwarzen Professor aus Kenia bewohnt wird. Ishmael, der Kommissar der Polizei von Madison, beginnt zu ermitteln. Der zunächst verdächtige Afrikaner hat jedoch ein Alibi und entpuppt sich als Held im Kampf gegen den Völkermord in Ruanda, der Hunderte gerettet hat. Die Ermittlungen nehmen eine Wendung, als Ishmael einen Anruf erhält, der ihn nach Afrika führt, wo er als Schwarzer aus den wohlhabenden USA als 'weißer Mann' wahrgenommen wird. Dies führt zu einer intensiven Suche nach den Hintergründen des Mordes und den kriminellen Strukturen einer Hilfsorganisation für Ruanda. Der Kommissar wird mit der alltäglichen Gewalt und Korruption in Afrika konfrontiert und ist überrascht von der Vorgehensweise seiner Kollegen, die oft zuerst schießen. Er findet den Täter, der jedoch alle Zeugen beseitigt hat. Zurück in den USA beschließt Ishmael, die Sache auf eigene Faust zu klären. Der Roman hält die Leser in Spannung und bietet gleichzeitig tiefgehende Einblicke in gesellschaftliche Zustände in Amerika und Afrika, was nur möglich ist, wenn man in beiden Welten zu Hause und gleichzeitig fremd ist.