Biography of one of the founders of East Africa Indian National Congress and shapers of Nairobi. BNS, 48pp, KENYA. EAST AFRICAN EDUCATIONAL PUBLI., 9966251111

In this autobiography, Njenga traces his early life from his birth in 1929. Born into poverty with minimal education Njenga ventured into business during one of the toughest times in Kenya's colonial history becoming a respected politician and Cabinet Minister who interacted intimately with all the first three Presidents of independent Kenya. 388pp, KENYA. EAST AFRICAN EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS.

New in paperback. The third and last instalment of her incredible saga, Corinne describes her return to Switzerland and the difficulties that faced her there, detailing how she built a new life for herself and her daughter and overcame all obstacles with the same courage and optimism with which she faced the demands of her life in the Kenyan bush. Translated from the German by Peter Millar. 173pp, UK. ARCADIA.

Now in small paperback format. Sequel to the best-selling TICK BITE FEVER charts the author's relocation from Kenya to the 'mother country', previously familiar to him only through old copies of Punch magazine and the film Chariots of Fire. Would it be the anything like the place he had come to expect? 309pp, UK. EBURY.

2006 2005 0091900352 Paperback

Biography of the controversial Kenyan pastor who stands accused of child trafficking to the UK, a man who promised miracle babies to desperate members of his congregation. The book looks critically at Deya from his birth, through his days as a shoe trader in Nairobi before becoming a pastor and his eventual exile in the UK. Apps, b/w photos, 270pp, UK. MUMBI BOOKS.

Memoir by the US senator from Illinois tracing his father's migration from Kenya. 453pp, USA. VINTAGE USA.

A mesmerizing 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. 272pp, UK. HARVILL SECKER.

This is the autobiography of a Kenyan public figure and role model to Kenyan women, Muthoni Likimani, who has been a broadcaster, politician, teacher, actress and activist. Muthoni established Noni's Publicity, one of the first indigenously owned public relations firms in Africa. 379pp, KENYA. NONI'S PUBLICITY.

2005 9966997261 Paperback

In rich detail the author recalls the extraordinary adventures of her childhood amongst the Kikuyu and European expatriate community in Kenya at the beginning of the 20th century. First published in 1959. 280pp, UK. PIMLICO, 0712666133

The autobiography of the medical researcher and former vice-chancellor of the University of Nairobi whose work with HIV/AIDS has made him one of the foremost figures in the fight against the epidemic. He puts the events of his life into the context of Kenya's history. Index, b/w photographs, 287pp, KENYA. EAST AFRICAN EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS.

Biography of the Kenyan Olympic champion and diplomat. B/w illus, 180pp, KENYA. MVULE AFRICA PUBLISHERS.

New edition of this lyrical memoir in which the Italian author describes her life in Kenya, her deep love for the country and the tragedies that struck her family. Gloss, maps, xx, 315pp, UK. PENGUIN BOOKS.

Fr. Kaiser, a Catholic priest is perplexed at the agony he witnesses among his parishioners. He sees families brutalised and violently uprooted in the years 1990 to 1997 in which small scale farmers in Kenya were persecuted for greed and wealth. In this small volume he tells their story and the problems caused by a thick wall of official silence and intimidation by politicians. Illustrated with b/w photographs. 117pp, KENYA. CANA PUBLISHING.

2003 9966805559 Paperback

Kenya's women tell their stories of love, struggle, happiness and tragedy. Whether subsistence farmers, herders, sex workers, business women and beggars, they all talk candidly and vividly about the subjects closest to their hearts - marriage, childrearing, work and unemployment, self-help groups, genital cutting, ethnic tensions and the new government that has promised huge reforms. Index, gloss, 350pp, USA. AFRICA WORLD PRESS.

Now available in paperback. The acclaimed autobiography of the Kenyan political activist and writer. Charts his struggles against both the colonial government and the subsequent post independence governments. Imprisoned for a total of thirteen years and tortured, his story is a testament to the power of the human spirit against oppression. His writing is interspersed with the freedom songs of his people. Illustrated with b/w photographs and with a foreword by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and Nan Richardson. Notes, 367pp, USA.. SEVEN STORIES PRESS, 158322615X

New edition. Tracking this story of an African whistleblower who started out as a pillar of the establishment, Michela Wrong seeks answers to the questions that have puzzled outsiders and Africans alike for decades. What is it about African societies that makes corruption so hard to eradicate, so sweeping in its scope, so destructive in its impact? Why have so many African presidents found it so easy to reduce all political discussion to the self-serving calculation of which tribe gets to eat? And at what stage will Africans start placing the wider interests of their nation ahead of the narrow interests of their clan or ethnic group? Index, gloss, 400pp, UK. FOURTH ESTATE.

The biography of J.D. Otiende who fought for an independant Kenya and served in the first cabinet of the new country. Illustrated with b/w photographs. Bib, 66pp, KENYA. EAST AFRICAN EDUCATIONAL PUBLI., 9966251561

An account of the prison experiences of former Member of Parliament, writer and human rights activist Koigi Wa Wamwere. Detained by both Kenyatta and Moi, the author describes the political motivations for his arrest, trial and imprisonment, and the ramifications for justice and democracy in Kenya. 295pp, KENYA. VITA BOOKS.

1997 1869886100 Paperback

The story of a member of Mwakenya, an oppositional political movement in Kenya, who was imprisoned for six years and assasinated by 'thugs', essays by comrades on his ideas, his life, his assasination and his influence. 101pp, UK. VITA BOOKS.

1998 1869886127 Paperback

Originally published in 1999, this first-hand account of Britain's futile and often tragic struggle to retain its rich stake in East Africa has been updated and includes a new postscript. Photos, 368pp, SOUTH AFRICA. 30' SOUTH.

A graphic, harrowing diary of the tortures suffered by a distinguished opponent of the Moi regime during six and a half years in prison. UK. VITA.

1996 1869886089 Paperback

Examines the KFLA's publications, the role of Mau Mau in the anti-colonial struggle in Kenya and Kimaathi's central place in that struggle. B/w photos, 52pp, UK. VITA.

The memoirs of a young woman's childhood in rural Ireland and her move to Kenya at the age of eighteen as Grace Kelly's stand-in during the filming of Mogambo. Her new life in Africa takes her to the heart of Kikuyu land at the height of the Mau Mau rebellion and to South Africa as apartheid takes its hold on the country. 318pp, UK. SUMMERSDALE.

An investigation revealing the dark intrigue behind the tales of White Mischief and the 1941 murder of Lord Errol in Nairobi. Index, bib, notes, 374pp, UK. FOURTH ESTATE.

2000 1857028945 Paperback

Kenya's greatest choirmaster and Kenyatta confidante tells the story of his relationship with Kenya's founding father. The man behind one of Kenya's most influential songs - the haunting dirge that played on during those fateful days after the death of Kenya's first president - Mzee Ondego remembers a time that has become part of Kenya's living memory. 50pp, KENYA. KWANI TRUST.

A street-to-canvas account of one of Kenya's most successful artists, from his beginnings as a musical apprentice at the Coast, to lover of Drossie, to his emergence as a force in the interna-tional art world. 68pp, KENYA. KWANI TRUST.

A biography of one of the most controversial figures in African Colonial history. Grogan was the first to travel across the continent from north to south and became a pioneer settler in Kenya. Index, bib, notes, xvii, 470pp, UK. HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS.

Biography of Manilal Desai, one of the foremost political leaders of Kenya. In 1916 Manilal was appointed as secretary of the Nairobi Indian Association where he championed with his Indian and African allies the struggle for justice and equality. In 1921, he was elected as president of the Association and the following year also took on the chairmanship of the Nairobi Standing Committee of the EAINC. In September 1922, he was elected to preside over the EAINC and was charged with the responsibility of leading the Kenya Indian delegation to London to deliberate on the mounting antagonism between the Indians and the white settlers. The outcome was the Devonshire Declaration which checked the rush to white supremacy. Manilal Desai lived in Kenya during very momentous times, especially the period between 1915 and 1923 when a series of events produced violent differences of opinion which came to be described as the Indian Question. 248pp, KENYA. ZAND GRAPHICS.

Memoir covering an eventful life from his birth during the First World War to shortly before his death at the beginning of the next millennium. Some of his earliest memories are of his childhood in Africa and he maintained a lifelong fascination with the continent, despite interludes in Britain. He served with the Royal Engineers in the Second World War, travelling extensively in Africa and the Middle East, and subsequently returned to live in Kenya. Index, 288pp, UK. RADCLIFFE PRESS.

Harrowing tales of prison life from an opponent of the Moi regime. Apps, b/w photographs, 254pp, UK. VITA.

1997 1869886097 Paperback

Illustrated by the author's own photographs, this book evokes Kenya's vanishing tribal heritage, the dramatic landscapes of Kenya. Also intimately portrays his Samburu companions, and the Turkana and Pokot people. Index, b/w photos, gloss, map, xiii, 160pp. UK. HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS, 0006383920

Dr. Joseph Barrage Wanjui rose from humble beginnings to become Chairman and CEO of East African Industries (Unilever) and the Chancellor of the University of Nairobi. Here, he offers a narrative of his lineage, juxtaposing it with reminiscences of his formative years. 300pp, KENYA. NAIROBI UNIVERSITY PRESS.

This autobiography of the Kenyan writer and surgeon tackles his Asian roots, European education, and African family life. Index, b/w photographs, 346pp, KENYA. EAST AFRICAN EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS.

The story of a Jewish family who flee Nazi Germany in 1938 for a farm in Kenya. Each deal with the harsh realities of life in Africa in different ways, but it is Regina, the family's five year old daughter who embraces the country, learns the local languages and finds friends. When the war ends and they return to Germany, the family is again thrown into turmoil. 291pp, USA. WISCONSIN PRESS, UNIVERSITY OF, 0299199606

Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhod out of kilter with the world around him. This world came to him as a chaos of loud and colourful sounds: the hair dryers at his mother's beauty parlour, black mamba bicycle bells, mechanics in Nairobi, the music of Michael Jackson - all punctuated by the infectious laughter of his brother and sister, Jimmy and Ciru. He could fall in with their patterns, but it would take him a while to carve out his own. In this vivid and compelling debut, Wainaina takes us through his school days, his failed attempt to study in South Africa, a moving family reunion in Uganda, and his travels around Kenya. The landscape in front of him always claims his main attention, but he also evokes the shifting political scene that unsettles his views on family, tribe, and nationhood. Throughout, reading is his refuge and his solace. And when, in 2002, a writing prize comes through, the door is opened for him to pursue the career that perhaps had been beckoning all along. A series of fascinating reporting assignments follows in other African countries. Finally he circles back to a Kenya in the throes of post-election violence and finds he is not the only one questioning the old certainties. 272pp, UK. GRANTA.

Barack Obama, Sr. was part of Africa's 'independence generation' and in 1959 it seemed his star would shine brightly. He was 'airlifted' to the US from Kenya and given a university scholarship so that he could be prepared as part of the new leadership cadre that would be required following Kenya's independence in 1963. While in the Hawaii, he met Ann Dunham, and Barack Jr was born in 1961. He left his young family to gain a masters degree from Harvard. After that, Obama Sr's life became progressively more complicated. With three other women he fathered 7 other children. One wife had to be smuggled out of his house by the housekeeper in fear of her life. Obama drank too much, was a womanizer, and his political career never recovered from his friendship with the totemic Kenyan leader Tom Mboya, who was shot dead moments after the two men had been talking. Barack Obama Sr. was a man of extreme flavours. A brilliant economist. Polygamist. Harvard graduate. Alcoholic. Ardent African nationalist. Father of eight, nurturer of none, and surely an unlikely figure to father the first African American president of the United States. Obama was a man of sweeping faith in a new Africa. He devoted his life to winning the freedom of his beloved Kenya and bringing to an end to decades of crippling domination by the British. He was, like his son-to-be, a man moved by the dream of a better world. Barack Obama Jr. saw his father only once, when he was ten years old, in Hawaii. 336pp, UK. PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

The classic account of a Danish woman's experiences running a coffee plantation in Kenya from 1914 to 1931. A lyrical evocation of the landscape, animals and the people of East Africa. 330pp, UK. PENGUIN BOOKS, 0141183330

Now in paperback. Amusing memoir of two decades of research into a baboon troop in Kenya. 304pp, UK. VINTAGE, 0099285770

Raila Amolo Odinga was the main opposition candidate in the disputed 2007 presidential election. Following a post-electoral crisis that resulted in the deaths of 1,500 people and the displacement of 600,000 more, Odinga took office as Prime Minister, at the head of a national unity government, in April 2008. He has played a key role in the modern political life of Kenya. This timely biography gives an overview of politics in Kenya over the last sixty years, and traces Raila’s role in them. Covers background about the Luo, Raila's background and inheritance as the son of a prominent political leader, the one-party state by fiat, the failed coup, detention, exile and return, cooperation with KANU, the Rainbow Alliance, Kibaki's succession in 2002, and Raila as a Minister. An epilogue gives verbatim extracts from many of those interviewed, including Raila himself. Bib, 367pp, NIGERIA. YINTAB BOOKS.

Candid memoir of historical value. B/w ill, index, v, 132pp, KENYA. MISC PUBLISHERS IN KENYA,

1999 DELAY Paperback

New in trade paperback. Fourteen years after fleeing Kenya with her baby daughter, Corinne returned in the summer of 2004 to meet Lketinga, her Masai ex-husband, and his family again in their village, Barsaloi. Nervous as she was, and uncertain as to how he would react on seeing her again, she found to her relief that she was welcomed unreservedly by all who remembered her. Corinne Hofmann revisits an area of a country which she cares about passionately, describing in her immensely readable style the changes she saw after her time away. 172pp, UK. ARCADIA.

The biography of Michael Wamalwa Kijana the first vice president of Kenya to die in office. The author tells the story of his life and his odyssey through the turbulent waters of Kenyan politics. 155pp, KENYA. OAKLANDBOOKS.

2004 9966996917 Paperback

This fully authorised biography, drawn from the author's personal association with Beryl and her family, paints a vivid portrait of a tempestuous and controversial character. It tells of her friendship with Karen Blixen (though she commandeered Blixen's husband Bror and lover Denys Finch Hatton), of her spectacular courage when she became the first person to fly from England to America, and of the mysteries surrounding her bestselling book WEST WITH THE NIGHT. 448pp, UK. ABACUS.

Takes you through a journey of faith and courage at a time of momentous social, economic and political transitions in Kenya. Notes, bib, index, KENYA. CANA PUBLISHING.

2001 9966971017 Paperback

A witty memoir of an African childhood, written from the perspective of a bemused and clumsy young boy. The author moved with his family from England to Zambia in 1971 at the age of three and later to Kenya. 245pp, UK. EBURY, 0091897432

New in paperback. Biography of the aristocratic lover of aviatrix Beryl Markham, and of Karen Blixen, a romance immortalised in her book 'Out of Africa'. 'No one who ever met him,' his Times obituary concluded, 'whether man or woman, old or young, white or black, failed to come under his spell.' 304pp, UK . VINTAGE.

In April 1992, David Sadera Munyakei, a newly employed clerk at the Central Bank of Kenya started noticing irregularities in the export compensation claims he was processing. On July 31st 2006, Kenya's biggest whistleblower passed away in rural obscurity, 14 years after exposing the Goldenberg scandal, Kenya's biggest economic scandal to date, estimated at over US$1 billion. Billy Kahora recounts his story. 138pp, KENYA. KWANI TRUST.

Born in a rural Kenyan village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most African girls then were uneducated. In her remarkable and inspiring autobiography, she tells of her studies with Catholic missionaries, earning bachelors and master's degrees in the United States, and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD and to head a university department in Kenya. She tells of her numerous run-ins with the brutal government of Daniel arap Moi and of the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa, and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. Index, b/w photos, 314pp, UK. WILLIAM HEINEMANN.

Makham Singh (-1973) was an Indian settler in Kenya, who became a founding father of the trade union movement, and a leading opponent of the colonial state. He refused to accept a trade union movement segregated by race and the colonial apartheid that reinforced a hierarchy of races between black Africans, Asians and whites in such humiliating fashion. Instead, he demonstrated that the liberation of Asians and Africans were inextricably linked, and that imperialism and colonialism are the enemies of all peoples, and should be met with non-violent resistance. 586pp, KENYA. ZAND GRAPHICS.

Biography of one of the most pre-eminent Catholic figures in Kenya, Ndingi Mwana a Nzeki. Written with the cooperation of the archbishop, the people who knew him and aided by free access to his private diaries and memoirs, the authors have tried to trace the rise of the archbishop as a young man in the plains of Machakos, his tumultuous years in Nakuru, Machakos and Nairobi and his many battles with the political leaders of his time. 234pp, KENYA. LONGHORN.

The story of Berida Ndambuki, a Kenyan woman. She relates her personal history, 'presenting herself as neither an uncontested victim, nor an unblemished survivor, nor a triumphantly empowered victor. Her story demonstrates the fallacy of the traditional- modern model so often applied to Africa, and her knowledge reaches from her grandmother's experiences in the early twentieth century, through British colonialism, Kenyan independence, and contemporary struggles, both political and economic. See also item no. 12813. 34 b/w photos, xxxi, 240pp USA. INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

First published in 1942, this classic account describes the author's life in Kenya over thirty years describing her childhood amongst the Masaai and the Nandi and her flights across East Africa. This new edition includes an introduction by Martha Gellhorn. 293pp, UK. VIRAGO, 0860685411

Now in paperback. A love story, an adventure yarn, and, incidentally, a piece of social anthro-pology. Corinne Hofmann falls in love with a Masai man while on holiday with her boyfriend in Kenya. After overcoming all sorts of obstacles, she moves into a tiny shack with him and his mother in his village, and spends four years in Kenya. Slowly but surely the dream starts to crumble until she flees back home with her baby daughter. Translated from the German by Peter Millar. Col plates, 320pp, UK. ARCADIA.

The story of the notorious White Mischief case. When the body of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll was discovered with a bullet through his head, just outside Nairobi in 1941, the resulting scandal revealed the extent of upper class decadence and misbehaviour in East Africa. Illustrated with b/w photographs. 299pp, UK. VINTAGE UK.

A unique collection of essays accompany Wilfred Thesiger's own personal photographs of the Africa he experienced as one of the world's most celebrated explorers. Born at the British Legation in 1910 in Addis Ababa, Thesiger spent his early years in Abyssinia. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and in 1930, aged twenty, attended the coronation of Haile Selassie at the Emperor's personal invitation. Throughout his life he journeyed through some of the remotest, most dangerous areas of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, witnessing and photographing fast-changing cultures to great acclaim. His many inspiring travels involved explorations in Ethiopia, wartime service with the SOE and the SAS, crossings of the Empty Quarter of Arabia, sojourns in the Iraqi marshes and many loyal and sometimes turbulent friendships. During the 1960s he travelled extensively in East Africa, and from 1978 he spent the greater part of each year living among the pastoral Samburu in Kenya, until retiring to England in 1994. He was knighted in 1995 and died in 2003, aged ninety-three. Published to coincide with the centenary of Wilfred Thesiger's birth and a major exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum, this book is a moving celebration of Thesiger's enduring relationship with the African continent, and his fascination with its peoples and landscapes. Containing around two hundred photographs from Thesiger's personal archive, many of them previously unpublished, these essays explore and evaluate his lifetime of exploration and travel in Africa, as well as, for the first time, his photographic practice and its legacy as a museum collection. 256pp, UK. HARPER PRESS.

New in paperback. Maitland's biography had Thesiger's support before he died in 2003, and has been written with full access, granted to no one else, to the rich Thesiger archive vivid, intimate family correspondence, and his own letters, diaries and notebooks which are far more confiding than his scrupulously edited published accounts. Maitland investigates in depth Thesiger's parents and family influences; his wartime experiences and the ethos of conflict; his philosophy as a hunter and conservationist; his development as a writer and photographer; his close friendships with the Arabs and Africans amongst whom he lived; and his sexuality. 448pp, UK. HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS.

Henry Muoria (1914-97), self-taught journalist and pamphleteer, helped to inspire Kenya's nationalisms before Mau Mau. The pamphlets reproduced here, in Gikuyu and English, contrast his own originality with the conservatism of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first President. The contributing editors introduce Muoria's political context, tell how three remarkable women sustained his families' life; and remember him as father. 412pp, NETHERLANDS. BRILL.