Patrick Mukabi. [Courtesy] Since we must pay tribute to the legacy of Patrick Mukabi, Maisha Yetu decided to do it a bit differently. We got in touch with a number of people, mostly in the art world, and who interacted with Mukabi in one way or the other, and asked them to remember him. One thing came out quite clearly: Panye had a passion for mentoring young artists. Below are some of their observations: James Murua: Literary blogger The death of Patrick Mukabi is a huge loss for the Kenyan art scene. His art, most famously seen at the Java Restaurant chain, showed Kenyan people…
Author: Mbugua Ngunjiri
Today we continue with our analysis of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) report on the book industry in Africa titled The African Book Industry: Trends, challenges and opportunities for growth. While last week we examined the report on public libraries, which revealed that Kenya is doing poorly on this front, today we look at the Kenyan book industry in general. The Unesco report says that Kenya is among a select few countries in Africa that have thriving book sectors. The others include Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. The Kenyan book industry supplies books to neighbouring countries, such…
Diana Mosoba is in the growing list of young self-published writers who are giving book lovers good value for their money and making the visit to the bookstore a pleasurable experience. When Mosoba’s book Till Death Do Us Part came out, she hit the ground running, marketing her book on social media. She even went to Zambia, by bus, to promote it. It helps that she has a sizeable following on Facebook, which she exploited to push the message out there. As the noise about Mosoba’s book got louder, I made a mental note of squeezing it into my long waiting list of to-read books. Mosoba has not only…
Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki’s book, NaiRobbery Cocktail. (Courtesy) Picture this, it is a Saturday night and a priest on the prowl picks up a hooker and they end up in his house, located in a church compound. In the morning, he leaves the girl in bed and goes to conduct mass. No way! You might say. Well, this is one of the very many risqué scenes in Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki’s book, NaiRobbery Cocktail, released in November last year. As the title suggests, the book is about to take the reader on a bumpy ride into the inner sanctums of the Nairobi crime world. Bumpy in that…