THE PEOPLE OF OSTRICH MOUNTAIN

In this novel, Kenya is the center of three lives connected by blood and friendship.

In Part 1, it’s 1952, and Kenya—long under colonial rule—is seeing violent clashes as the British try to put down the Mau Mau uprising. Atrocities and police raids affect the small village of Kĩandutu, home of 14-year-old Wambũi Karanja. Gifted in mathematics, Wambũi is accepted at a prestigious Kenyan boarding school, where she gains a mentor and friend in her White mathematics teacher, Eileen Atwood. Wambũi eventually marries shopkeeper Mwangi Kĩng’ori, discovering in herself an unexpected talent for business. In Part 2, Eileen is forced into retirement in 1989 and returns to England, where she feels like a stranger after more than 40 years away. Meanwhile, Wambũi’s son, Raymond, becomes a doctor, taking a residency at a Chicago hospital, where he experiences both prejudice and success. In his debut novel, Githaiga writes in the great realist tradition, sometimes recalling Victorian novelists like Dickens or, more recently, Vikram Seth. He paints on a wide canvas—investigating points of view of those disparate in age, gender, and nationality with equal attention and skill—in prose that’s lively but dignified. For example: “homesickness, that erstwhile banished companion, began to make an unwelcome comeback.” Racism is an important theme in the novel, all the more effectively explored because Githaiga uses a scalpel, not a hammer. Wambũi, taking the train to boarding school, notices a sign reading “WHITES ONLY. She turned left and continued walking.” Also thoughtfully considered is the complexity of immigration, as with Eileen’s story. Home, to her, is Kenya, where she’s never become a citizen.

A rich, absorbing story of destinies intertwined across time and space.