Ukwaju Book of the Moment: “Half Portraits Under Water” by Dennis Mugaa

“Half Portraits Under Water by Dennis Mugaa. Poignant, lyrical, sensitive. Mosaics of a people, a restless continent in coming-of-age cycles. Reflective and beautiful, right from the first sentence. Timelines of Kenya’s contemporary history are projected in tender story vignettes etched into the lives of a composite of young people who are multi-local, multi-vocal, and pluralistic. They are casually and restlessly intra-and Pan-African in the way that Mugaa’s generation has become. Still, we find here enduring and familiar ghosts—Tom Mboya, the distinct political discontents that undergird the contemporary African experience. We meet memorable characters of and from the complex and many streams of Kenya, and Africa, who will haunt our imagination long after we put the book down: Wangari and Michael; Mama Yusuf and Yusuf. Hakim, Naila and Grandfather Ibrahim, Yagazie and Olioma and Gumato who has disappeared. Exile and ‘in-zile’, textures of human and codes of African being-ness. In this collection, you will glimpse something of the soul and shadows of a powerfully emergent generation. Such a treasure! Such a delight!” —Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

‘Half Portraits Under Water’ is available at all leading bookstores