Novel
Son of Woman
Charles Mangua · 1971
Synopsis
Dodge Kiunyu, the narrator, calls himself a son of woman, for his mother is a prostitute in Nairobi and he believes he was born of one of her clients. Brought up by her, then by a friend of his mother's, he is sent to the countryside at eleven, studies at a mission school then at Makerere University and enters the civil service. A corrupt official and a regular of the bars, he slides into schemes and knows prison. The narrative, funny and cynical, depicts a Kenyan society in full transformation.
Context
Written in seven months, when the author was in charge of planning for the Coast province, the book appeared in 1971 in Nairobi from East African Publishing House, the same year as Ali Mazrui's The Trial of Christopher Okigbo. It is regarded as the starting point of Kenyan popular literature. Long kept at a distance by academic criticism, it was the subject in 1995 of a study by Greenfield in the Journal of Modern African Studies, and critics have discussed the place it gives women.
Who it is for
For reading a funny and raw novel of the Nairobi of the sixties, available in English only.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success, it sold about ten thousand copies in six months and was reprinted six times.
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