Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

DANCE OF THE JAKARANDA

Peter Kimani

Set in the shadow of Kenya’s independence from Great Britain, Kimani reimagines the rise and fall of colonialism in Africa, and the special circumstances that brought black, brown, and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation.

The novel traces the lives and loves of three men brought together by the railway, which intersect when preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian worker Babu Salim are implicated in the controversial birth of a child. Years later, when Babu’s grandson, Rajan (who ekes out a living by singing Babu’s epic tales of the railway’s construction), accidentally kisses a mysterious stranger in a dark nightclub, the encounter provides the spark to illuminate the three men’s shared, murky past.

Dance of the Jakaranda teems with life and vitality, love and lust; seldom has the story of Africa’s colonization been told with such tenderness and complex humanity, providing a new metaphor for race in contemporary Africa.

Peter Kimani was born in 1971 in Kenya. A leading African writer of his generation, he started his career as a journalist and is the author of several works of fiction and poetry. He was one of only three international poets commissioned by National Public Radio to compose and present poems to mark Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009. Kimani earned a doctorate in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program in 2014, and is a faculty member at Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications in Nairobi.

Available products
Book Published 2017-02-07 by Akashic Books
Book Published 2017-02-07 by Akashic Books

Comments

...lyrical and powerful historical novel... Kimani weaves together a bitter, hurtful past and hopeful present in this rich tale of Kenyan history and culture, the railroad, and the men and women whose lives it profoundly affected. Despite an overly complex and loose narrative, this is a thoughtful story about a country’s imperialist past.

Kimani’s complex novel will leave readers questioning the meanings of citizenship and belonging during an era of signi cant social upheaval in Kenya’s history.

A compelling story conveying a powerful social and cultural critique along with a marvelous portrait of the beauties and wonders of Kenya, all punctuated with tragedy.

Destined to become one of the greats . . . This is not hyperbole: it’s a masterpiece.

In his American debut, Kimani illustrates the discordant history of East Indians in Kenya through a fabulously complicated set of intriguing characters and events....Highlighted by its exquisite voice, Kimani’s novel is a standout debut.

Kimani has done a game job managing the carpentry of this ambitious novel, bringing great skill to the task of deploying multiple story lines, huge leaps back and forth in time and the withholding and distribution of information . . . I have never read a novel about [Kenya] that’s so funny, so perceptive, so subversive and so sly.

The characters are human, teaching us that even someone who does wrong is not all bad, and Kimani writes with such vivid detail that one can easily visualize the vast scenery. Reminiscent of Iman Verjee’s Who Will Catch Us as We Fall, this novel will appeal to readers of historical and literary fiction.

A fascinating part of Kenya’s history, real and imagined, is revealed and reclaimed by one of its own.