FEAST OR FAMINE

My Abandonment (2009) is set in Portland, Oregon, in the United States in the summer of 1999. The narrator is 13-year-old Caroline. She lives in a cave with her father in a forest park on the edge of town. They are hiding from people. She doesn’t go to school, but they read a lot of books from the St John’s library when they go to the city once a week. Then the police find them, and they are placed in a new house in the city, in a place close to her father’s new job and her new school. After four years in the forest park, Caroline will have to get used to this new life, but her father still likes to connect with the forest. ‘These are the worst days. The rules and the way things work in the city are different, sharper and dirtier than in the forest park …’ Her father says the government are keeping track of them. He calls them ‘the followers.’ He has a past that his daughter knows nothing about. Someone calls him Jerry, but she knows that’s not her father’s ...

Terrorists of the Aberdare (2009) is a novella set in the Aberdare Range of Kenya, Africa – a mountain range 160 kilometres north of Nairobi – on September 11, 2005. Sonko Wakadosi is 30 years old and dead, killed by a herd of elephants as they raided his cabbage farm. He is standing outside the locked gates of heaven, waiting to enter. He meets others waiting to enter heaven: a man killed by a hyena, and a girl attacked by a crocodile. The struggle to survive is not one of man against man, but of man against beast. These beasts are the terrorists of the Aberdare. Sonko, in death, in this tragi-comedy, reflects on the love of his life, while the narrator is attending Sonko’s funeral reflecting on the one thing that Sonko wanted in life – love. ‘’But he never got it.’’ Sonko loved Penina, the tomboy who loved life, but not him. ‘’He was too poor to afford her.’’ The narrator is tempted to blame Penina for the loss of his friend, rather than the elephant. Some blame...

The 20 th Nairobi International Book Fair (NIBF)   from September 27 – October 1, 2017 was organized by the Kenya Publishers Association (KPA), the umbrella organisation for book publishers in Kenya. The theme for the 2017 Nairobi International Book Fair was ‘’Unity through Books.’’ The NIBF presented book lovers with an opportunity to buy the latest books at discounted prices. There were also book launches and signings as well as various children’s activities sponsored by the Kenya Literature Bureau. The activities included debates, poetry composition writing, and teachers’ seminars. The highlight of the Book Fair was the awarding of the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, Kenya’s most prestigious literary award given out on a bi-annual basis by KPA. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (201...

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).