The African Shakespeare is back with another literary gourd filled to the brim with thoughtful, amusing, romantic, and picturesque poems!
Even without flying like ‘The Spirit of St. Louis’, the reader is magically transported from a city where ‘Everybody Knows a Kamau’ to a ‘Field of Dreams’; from ‘Past Lives’ to the present reality of a world where ‘Paradise is Lost’; from the machinations of ‘Miss Sweetness’ to the pleasures of ‘Kissing Nalaika’!
The narrative skills that have made the author one of the continent’s most admired scribes is evident in this sophomore poetry collection. We follow a love-struck researcher from ‘The Nigerian Convention on Nude Mice’, meet donors more interested in ‘Toothbrushes for Crocodiles’ than human welfare and hobnob with a zoologist intrigued by ‘The Sex Lives of Wild Animals’. We ponder ‘Greatness’, learn what it takes ‘To Be a Man’, admire the ‘Daughters of Eve’, find out what happened ‘The Night the School Burnt Down’, listen to ‘A Man in a Suit’, and – most importantly – examine the aftermath of the untimely death of ‘King Bure’...
‘Nobody Knows’ where Alexander Nderitu gets his thoughts and ideas from but any ‘Betting Man’ would definitely wager that he’s the closest thing to a griot south of the Sahara.