Final curtain falls on Francis Imbuga

Francis Imbuga, whose play, Betrayal in the City, became one of Kenya's most iconic works of literature died on Sunday night after a stroke, the Daily Nation has reported via twitter.
Imbuga, who died at the age of 65, has had an illustrious writing career, emerging as one the most prolific playwrights in Kenya alongside the late Wahome Mutahi, who died after a botched surgery nine years ago.
As a literature lecturer, Prof Imbuga contributed to debates on culture and shaped a generation of scholars, teachers and writers who studied at Kenyatta University where he taught for many years.
Earlier this month, the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) reselected Betrayal in the City as a literature set book for secondary schools. This was the third time that the play was being used as a study text for students sitting the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education. Also reselected a second time was The River and the Source, a novel by the late Dr Margaret Ogola.
Betrayal in the City was a popular book during the repressive years of the Moi administration, firing the imagination of young readers who yearned for change in governance. The play's conflict was resolved in a bloodless coup lead by a disgruntled university student, Jasper Wendo, whose brother had been shot dead during an earlier protest by students. The play had high resonance especially because, in the years of the Moi repression, university students were at the forefront of championing democracy, human rights and other freedoms. Some of them would later ascend to positions of political leadership nationally.
On November 9, 2012, in an interview with the Saturday Nation, Prof Imbuga said that he would have preferred to have his newest play, The Return of Mgofu, selected as a set book, arguing that it had more contemporary themes. However, the book published by Longhorn Publishers Kenya Ltd, was not among those submitted to KIE for consideration.
Among his other books are Aminata, Man of Kafira (a sequel to Betrayal in the City), Shrine of Tears and Miracle of Remera among others.
Prof Imbuga's widow, Prof Mabel Imbuga, is vice-chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Writer shares session with Daystar University students

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon in a literary discussion with students from Daystar University's Athi River campus.
It was an enriching experience for me and I enjoyed sharing with the group at the invitation of their two lecturers, Dr Wandia Njoya and Mr Larry Ndivo.
Click here for a report on the discussion.
Thank you very much to the Daystar fraternity for their support and the students for the engaging interaction.

KIE Picks River and The Source as new KCSE set book

Out goes Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between and in comes The River and the Source by Dr Margaret Ogola.
The Kenya Institute of Education has picked the late Ogola's family saga as the new Kenya Certificate for Secondary Education set book to be studied in schools for the next five years.
Also making a comeback to the secondary education curriculum is Prof Francis Imbuga's play, Betrayal in the City, which was a set book in the late 1980s.The play is a story about how a university student, Jasper Wendo, helped topple an African dictator in a bloodless coup following the killing of his brother, Jere.
This is the second time that the institute, which determines the national curriculum has used Dr Ogola's novel and the third that is using Prof Imbuga's play as set books. The first time that the novel was studied was between 1998 and 2001. The book, published by Focus Books in 1994, won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1995 and the Commonwealth Writers' (Africa Region) Best First Book prize the same year.
The author died of cancer in September, 2011, the same month as the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laurette and fellow countrywoman Wangari Maathai.
The school edition of Prof Ngugi's book was published by East African Educational Publishers five years ago. The original novel by the same title was published by Heinemman in 1965 under the African Writers Series pioneered by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's whose ground-breaking novel, Things Fall Apart, has also been a set book twice in the Kenyan curriculum, the latest being between 1988 and 1991. The school edition was re-edited to make it conform with changing cultural and education realities, including re-writing the sections on female circumcision, also commonly referred to as female genital mutilation.

Dr Ogola's novel is a story of three generations of women from the same family and traces their journeys through life at different stages of Kenya's history and how they confronted the challenges of their time, from lack of education to living with HIV. Dr Ogola was a pediatrician at the Kenyatta National Hospital. 
Also picked by KIE this year is Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle to be studied under "Plays from the rest of the world category". The school edition of the book is published by Target Publications. Wikipedia describes the play as "a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than its natural parents".
Brecht, who was born in Germany in 1898, wrote play in 1944 while he was living in the US. He died in August 1956.
Target is publishing the play under license from Penguin Books. The publisher's swahili book, Kidagaa Kimemwozea, by Prof Ken Walibora, was also picked in the Kiswahili category. Prof Walibora teaches in the US.
Kidagaa Kimemwozea replaces Utengano (authored by Prof Said Ahmed and published by Longhorn) while Caucasian Chalk Circle replaces EAEP's An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen.
Betrayal in the City, meanwhile, replaces John Ruganda's Shreds of Tenderness, which was published by the Oxford University Press, Kenya.
The new books will be taught and examined alongside Witi Ihimaera's novel, The Whale Rider, which was selected last year. Prof Ngugi's book was to have been replaced at the same time but the decision was deferred until this year.
According to the New Zealand Book Council, Ihimaera, 68, is the first Maori writer to publish short stories and a novel. His book has been described as "a magical, mythical work about a young girl whose relationship with a whale ensures the salvation of her village.

Haruki Murakami's 'A Wild Sheep Chase' creates magical world

Can a woman have such beautiful ears that she has to keep them hidden away to live a normal life? Can a sheep with a mark of the red star occupy the souls of men and spur them to reach great heights in their society? Can the search for this sheep change a man’s fortunes so much that he has to close down his business, lose his girlfriend and make so much money all in a space of a month? And what secret does a man simply known as “The Rat” hold that could unlock the mystery of the sheep?
These are the questions that jump to mind on reading Haruki Murakami’s novel, A Wild Sheep Chase.
Yet, the novel — first published in 1982 in Tokyo as Hitsujio Meguru Boken — is hard to place. Is it a mythology? There are flashes of mythology running throughout the otherwise modern urban narrative. Is it a detective story? But the unnamed protagonist is not a detective. He is just another bored, hard-smoking small-time PR executive until a mysterious man walks into his office and gives him the seemingly impossible assignment to go on a wild sheep chase in the hills of Hokaido, Japan. Is the book a romance? It cannot be because the main character is a self-obsessed man who is more contended chasing the wild thoughts coursing through his mind than he is in winning over the hearts of the women in his life, including the part-time call girl-cum-editor with the beautiful ears.
Some critics have described it as a comic and in the final analysis it is an engrossing book to read and may be that is all that matters.
It is interesting that the novel — despite having been written thirty years ago — has this year been occupying prominent display positions in European bookshelves. Is it because Murakami, the author, is enjoying a renaissance or is it because he also wrote the much-acclaimed IQ84, which was published in three volumes, the first of which came out in 2009 and the last in 2010?
In one of the blurbs on the cover, a reviewer from the Sunday Herald says: “Murakami is a true original and yet in many ways he is also like Franz Kafka’s successor because he seems to have the intelligence to know what Kafka truly was — a comic writer”.
Murakami originally writes in Japanese and his books have been translated into English, with A Wild Sheep Chase being first published in the UK in 2000 (by Havill Press) and later by Vintage in 2003.
According to Wikipedia, the first edition of IQ84 — a tome in its own right — was sold out on the first day and went on to sell a million copies in the first month of publication. This, then, vindicates the renewed interest in his earlier works, including A Wild Sheep Chase.
The New York Times Book review rightly notes that “there isn’t a kimono to be found in A Wild Sheep Chase. Its main characters, men and women, wear Levis.”
Indeed, were it not that the plot is set in Tokyo and a remote village Hokaido, this is a story that could have been set anywhere, even the windy hills of Mau where it is not uncommon to find sheep grazing in the undulating grasslands that were once forests. And this underlines Murakami’s reputation as an international writer.