The Macharia family had every reason to hate Kenyatta. Their appeal for restoration of their land had failed, only to boost the success of Chief Waruingi’s family. They could not forgive the Kenyatta’s government for not pardoning Macharia but instead letting him die after years of detention. They had nursed the hope, in collaboration with the disgruntled freedom fighters, that the new government of President Daniel arap Moi would help them find justice.

The youthful generation is yearning for information, as times have shown that everyone needs to be updated to avoid making the mistakes that our forefathers made when they were colonised and made to think that they couldn’t think on their own or make sane decisions. 

This first instalment of David Maillu’s upcoming novel 'The Haves and the Have-Nots' opens our new book serialisation series. The novel dissects the dynamics of social relationships in Kenya’s immediate post-independence period, during which the divisions arising from the freedom struggle continued to have a profound effect on the young nation.

This year, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, and as the announcement makes its global rounds, the question lingers: why does Africa still look to Stockholm for validation? What would it take to build a prize and a reading culture that recognises our brilliance without waiting for the world’s permission? But perhaps, it’s time we asked: why do we still crave that stamp? What would it take for Africa to build its own literary validation, one rooted in its people, its readership, and its histories?

Bulawayo’s win was not simply about recognition. It was about the arrival of a new voice; sharp, urgent, and unwilling to romanticise hardship. The children in Hitting Budapest are not abstract symbols of poverty; they are fully alive, funny, cruel, curious, and unforgettable.

Traditionally, the nyatiti was reserved for initiated men. For a young Japanese woman to not only learn it but master it was unthinkable.