Things Fall Apart

When Bella, a fashion photographer living in Rome, learns of her beloved half-brother’s murder, she travels to Nairobi to care for her niece and nephew. But when their mother resurfaces, reasserting her maternal rights and bringing with her a gale of chaos and confusion that mirrors the deepening political instability in the region, Bella must decide how far she will go to obey the call of sisterly responsibility. Author: Nurudin Farah ISBN: 9781594634109

Kenya, 2007. Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His sister, Ajany, and their father bring his body back home, to a crumbling colonial house in northern Kenya. But the peace they seek is hard to find: the murder has stirred deeply buried memories of colonial violence, of the killing-sprees of the Mau Mau uprising, and the shocking political assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969. When a young Englishman appears, searching for his missing father, another story, of love, or at least a connection, begins. This is a spellbinding state of the nation novel about Kenya, showing how the violence of the past informs the violence and disorder of the present. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s memorable characters; Ajany’s mother, deranged with grief and past violations, the Trader, embodying the timeless nomadic traders of Sudan, and Odidi himself, who transcended his past, came to success, and then a tragic end, are enchanting. Owuor reveals to us a new Kenya, a Kenya of bloodshed but also of modernity, suffused with a spirit world only half-remembered. This is a country where the characters listen so acutely for what is not said, and for the voices from the distant and recent past. Author: Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor ISBN: 9780345802545