What started out as a blog for book reviews and a gathering of friends in a book club, has grown into a one-stop shop for book related solutions. We are now a bookstore, a book café, a book box service and a book club.
We are located at: Suite 12, Ground Floor, West Wing, The Greenhouse Mall, Ngong Rd, Nairobi
by Peter Kimani
“This funny, perceptive and ambitious work of historical fiction by a Kenyan poet and novelist explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy through the stories of three men involved with the building of a railroad linking Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean ― what the Kikuyu called the ‘Iron Snake’ and the British called the ‘Lunatic Express."
―New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
Kimani reimagines the rise and fall of colonialism in Africa by telling the story of the birth of Kenya's railroad.
​
Set in the shadow of Kenya’s independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines 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―preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian technician Babu Salim―whose lives intersect when they 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.
​
With its riveting multiracial, multicultural cast and diverse literary allusions, Dance of the Jakaranda could well be a story of globalization. Yet the novel is firmly anchored in the African oral storytelling tradition, its language a dreamy, exalted, and earthy mix that creates new thresholds of identity, providing a fresh metaphor for race in contemporary Africa.
Soma Nasi, won’t you?
Our Best Sellers
Special Offers
