NAIROBI NOIR

Fourteen new crime stories set in Kenya’s capital and largest city.

The teeming diversity of Nairobi, a metropolis of more than 3 million people, is reflected in this anthology, illustrated by a map of the city that shows a different neighborhood location for each story, the neighborhood’s name mischievously overlaying the white silhouette of a corpse. The highlights are as diverse as the city itself. In Winfred Kiunga’s “She Dug Two Graves,” a young woman with a bright future sets out with a vengeance to solve the devastating murder of her brother. Faith Oneya’s “Say You Are Not My Son” traces the bizarre aftermath of the “sewer volcano” that erupts in a squalid neighborhood. Rasna Warah chronicles the psychiatric visits of a distressed United Nations worker in the twisty “Have Another Roti.” Music figures prominently in several of the stories: “The Hermit in the Helmet,” by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, features many hymns in its saga of an educated man driven to irrational extremes by the perceived power of the title headgear. J.E. Sibi-Okumu deconstructs the anatomy of a robbery in piercing detail in “Belonging.” The collection ends with the most traditionally noir story, Ngumi Kibera’s “The Night Beat,” a gritty procedural centering on military police. There are also stories by Kevin Mwachiro, Kinyanjui Kombani, Troy Onyango, Makena Onjerika, Peter Kimani, Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ, Caroline Mose, and Stanley Gazemba.

The latest in Akashic’s long-running series runs the gamut in style, introducing a generous assortment of new writers.