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Nairobi Heat

Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Part of Melville International Crime

In Madison, Wisconsin, it’s a big deal when African peace activist Joshua Hakizimana—famous for saving hundreds of people from the Rwandan genocide—accepts a position at the university. When a young girl is found murdered on his doorstep. For local police Detective Ishmael—an African-American in an “extremely white” town—it seems like the kind of crime that happens in an area where the Ku Klux Klan still holds rallies. But then he gets a mysterious phone call: “If you want the truth, you must go to its source. The truth is in the past. Come to Nairobi.” It’s the beginning of a journey that will take Ishmael to a place still vibrating from the surrounding genocide, where NGO money rules and where the local cops shoot first and ask questions later. And although it’s the land of his ancestors, it becomes a disorienting and terrifying quest through the slums of Nairobi, a place where knowing the truth about history can kill you.

MUKOMA WA NGUGI was born in Illinois but raised in Kenya. The son of world renowned African writer and Nobel contender, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, his own poetry and fiction has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African writing in 2009), and for the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing. He is currently based in Cleveland, Ohio, where he teaches at Case Western University.

"An engaging insider's view of the cultural divide between Americans and Africans."
Publishers Weekly