Novel
Kill Me Quick
Meja Mwangi · 1973
Synopsis
Meja and Maina, school-leaving certificates in hand, head for the city, sure of finding the work that will let them help their families. With no job, and too ashamed to go home, they live in back yards among other homeless young people and feed on rotten fruit and stale cakes taken from the bins. Hired for a time on a rich family's farm, they lose their place through Maina's fault. The two friends part: Meja goes down into a coal mine, Maina joins the gang of a certain Razor in the shanty towns.
Context
The author's first book, published in 1973, the novel received the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature the following year. It leaves aside the epics of the struggle against colonisation for the city after independence and follows young men who have done everything the new Kenya asked of them, only to find that honest employment remains a mirage. Critics have read in it the story of a Kenyan dream betrayed by a society that praises education without rewarding it, and the author confirmed this vein three years later with a Nairobi novel.
Who it is for
For those who want to see Nairobi in the seventies from the vantage point of those who look in vain for a place there.
Prizes and reception
Jomo Kenyatta Prize in 1974; it launched the career of one of Kenya's great novelists of the city.