QUICK DELIVERY
Swift dispatch
-17%
The Windmill Dance by NEVILLE OTUKI
KShs1,500.00 KShs1,200.00
Confessions Of Nairobi Men by Joan Thatiah
KShs1,500.00 KShs1,250.00
In stock
Confessions of Nairobi Men is a culmination of three years Joan Thatiah has spent having candid conversations with men and women living in Nairobi.
It this book, you will come face to face with fifteen men. Men who have been broken in every way, men who are still trying to pick up pieces of their lives, men who are deeply passionate and men who are deeply faulted.
Shipping
Reviews (1)
1 review for Confessions Of Nairobi Men by Joan Thatiah
Clear filters
Vendor Info
Vendor Information
- Store Name: Joan Thatiah
- Vendor: Joan Thatiah
- No ratings found yet!
More Products
Things I Will Tell My Daughter: Uncensored truths on love, money and womanhood by Joan Thatiah
Damn, Girl! Stop That : How women shoot themselves in the foot by Joan Thatiah
I’m Too Pretty To Be Broke and Other lies you’ve been telling yourself by Joan Thatiah
Guilty: A Novel by Joan Thatiah
Raised in a small village in Eastern Kenya, Judith is determined to escape her tumultuous childhood. At 29, the firstborn daughter of a retired cotton refinery worker in Mbeere joins the ranks of the Nairobi City office executives and imagines she has succeeded in her mission.
When she returns to the village for her mother's funeral and meets a mysterious stranger, she is completely taken by him. But Jeffari is a man on a mission. She is his mark, too trying to smash the glass ceiling to notice him leading her to the core of East Africa's largest terrorism network.
Confessions of Nairobi Women by Joan Thatiah
Confessions of Nairobi Men Book Two by Joan Thatiah
Confessions of Nairobi Men Book Two is a raw and intimate collection of true stories that delve deep into the hearts and minds of Nairobi Men. In this powerful sequel, these confessions reveal personal struggles , heartbreaks, and secrets that will leave you questioning what you think you know about masculinity and vulnerability. Each story invites you to pause and reflect on the pressures, desires and emotional battles faced by these men.
TW: The stories in this book may be difficult or triggering for some readers.
Related products
The War Within
As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the U.S. government from 2006 through mid-2008.
The White House launches a secret strategy review that excludes the military. General George Casey, the commander in Iraq, believes that President Bush does not understand the war and eventually concludes he has lost the president's confidence. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also conduct a secret strategy review that goes nowhere. On the verge of revolt, they worry that the military will be blamed for a failure in Iraq.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice strongly opposes a surge of additional U.S. forces and confronts the president, who replies that her suggestions would lead to failure. The president keeps his decision to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld from Vice President Dick Cheney until two days before he announces it. A retired Army general uses his high-level contacts to shape decisions about the war, as Bush and Cheney use him to deliver sensitive messages outside the chain of command.For months, the administration's strategy reviews continue in secret, with no deadline and no hurry, in part because public disclosure would harm Republicans in the November 2006 elections. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley tells Rice, "We've got to do it under the radar screen because the electoral season is so hot.""The War Within" provides an exhaustive account of the struggles of General David Petraeus, who takes over in Iraq during one of the bleakest and most violent periods of the war. It reveals how breakthroughs in military operations and surveillance account for much of the progress as violence in Iraq plummets in the middle of 2007.Woodward interviewed key players, obtained dozens of never-before-published documents, and had nearly three hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush. The result is a stunning, firsthand history of the years from mid-2006, when
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Bob Woodward
The Taming of the Queen
Why would a woman marry a serial killer?
Because she cannot refuse...
Kateryn Parr, a thirty-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when a man old enough to be her father who has buried four wives – King Henry VIII – commands her to marry him.
Kateryn has no doubt about the danger she faces: the previous queen lasted sixteen months, the one before barely half a year. But Henry adores his new bride and Kateryn's trust in him grows as she unites the royal family, creates a radical study circle at the heart of the court, and rules the kingdom as regent.
But is this enough to keep her safe? A leader of religious reform and a published author, Kateryn stands out as an independent woman with a mind of her own. But she cannot save the Protestants, under threat for their faith, and Henry's dangerous gaze turns on her.The traditional churchmen and rivals for power accuse her of heresy - the punishment is death by fire and the king's name is on the warrant...
From an author who has described all of Henry's queens comes a deeply intimate portrayal of the last: a woman who longed for passion, power and education at the court of a medieval killer.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Philippa Gregory
The Snowman
Internationally acclaimed crime writer Jo Nesbø’s antihero police investigator, Harry Hole, is back: in a bone-chilling thriller that will take Hole to the brink of insanity.
Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf.
Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother—and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised—and constantly revised—by the killer.
Fiercely suspenseful, its characters brilliantly realized, its atmosphere permeated with evil, The Snowman is the electrifying work of one of the best crime writers of our time.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Jo Nesbo
Kill Shot
Vince Flynn’s intensely suspenseful #1 New York Times bestseller puts the young, hungry, and lethal superagent of American Assassin in the crosshairs even as he kills with impunity.
In the year since the CIA trained and then unleashed him, Mitch Rapp has dismantled, kill by untraceable kill, the network of monsters behind the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack. The hunt leads to Paris, where a deadly trap is sprung as the bullet leaves Rapp’s silenced pistol—followed by the discovery of nine bodies, including Libya’s oil minister, in one of the city’s finest hotels. Washington wants no part of the international crisis, and Rapp is deemed a liability by Stan Hurley, one of his handlers. But as he slips outside their control to operate on his own, it will soon become clear that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded and cornered Mitch Rapp.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Vince Flynn
The Survivor
Top secret data has been stolen from the CIA, and the only man who knows its hiding place is dead. CIA operative Mitch Rapp must race to find the classified information in this blistering novel that picks up where The Last Man left off in Vince Flynn’s New York Times bestselling series.
Joseph “Rick” Rickman, former boy wonder at the CIA, stole a massive amount of top secret and hugely compromising intel concerning classified operations all over the world, offering it (and himself) to the Pakistani secret forces. Only his plans went awry when CIA director Irene Kennedy sent Mitch Rapp to hunt him down. It turns out that killing Rickman didn’t solve anything—in fact, the nightmare is only intensifying. Rickman stored the potentially devastating data (CIA assets, operatives, agents) somewhere only he knew, and somehow, from beyond the grave, he still poses a mortal threat to America.
Now it’s a deadly race as both the Pakistanis and the Americans search for Rickman’s accomplices and the information they are slowly leaking to the world. Will Rapp outrun and outthink his enemies, or will the Pakistanis find it first and hold America hostage to their dream of becoming the world’s new nuclear superpower?
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills
Separation of Power
CIA superagent Mitch Rapp is back in action in Vince Flynn's high-velocity New York Times bestseller.
Newly appointed CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy is the target of an inside plot to destroy her and prematurely end the American President's term.
To make matters worse, Saddam Hussein is close to entering the nuclear arms race -- something Israel has vowed to stop. With the haunting specter of World War III looming, the President calls on his secret weapon: top counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp. But with only two weeks to take out the nukes, Rapp is up against a ticking clock -- and impossible odds.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Vince Flynn
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Brief Summary
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).
Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.
New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive."
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960.
It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.
Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature."
First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer
Charles Seymour, second-born son, will never be the earl like his father, but he did inherit his mother's strength-and the will to realize his destiny....Simon Kerslake's father sacrificed everything to make sure his son's dreams come true. Now it is Simon's chance to rise as high as those dreams allow....
Ray Gould was born to the back streets but raised with pride-a quality matched by a sharp intellect and the desire to attain the impossible....Andrew Fraser was raised by a soccer hero turned politician. Now it's his turn for heroics, whatever the cost.
From strangers to rivals, four men embark on a journey for the highest stakes of all-the keys to No. 10 Downing Street. Unfolding over three decades, their honor will be tested, their loyalties betrayed, and their love of family and country challenged. But in a game where there is a first among equals, only one can triumph.
Vicious Circle
Internationally bestselling author Wilbur Smith returns with Vicious Circle--a heart-racing story of family secrets, greed, and revenge.
Hector Cross left behind a career of high risks and warfare when he married his beloved Hazel Bannock. But after his new life is tragically upended, he recognizes the ruthless hand of an old enemy behind the attack.
Determined to fight back, Hector draws together a team of his most loyal friends and fellow warriors to hunt down those who pursue him and his loved ones. For he and Hazel have a child, a precious daughter, whom he will go to the ends of the earth to protect.
Soon, however, Hector learns that the threat comes not just from his old enemies, but also Hazel's. Brutal figures from her family's past—thought long gone—are returning, with an agenda so sinister that Hector realizes he is facing a new type of adversary. One whose deadly methods and dark secrets will lead Hector to a series of crimes so shocking that he has no choice but to settle the score.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Wilbur Smith
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself.
As Alma's research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction — into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist — but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.
Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe—from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who — born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution — bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers
The Godfather of Kathmandu
Sonchai Jitpleecheep--John Burdett's inimitable Royal Thai Police detective with the hard-bitten demeanor and the Buddhist soul--is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Solving the murder could mean a promotion, but Sonchai, reeling from a personal tragedy, is more interested in Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama based in Kathmandu who has become his guru. There are, however, obstacles in Sonchai's path to nirvana. Police Colonel Vikorn has just named Sonchai his consigliere (he's been studying "The Godfather" on DVD): to troubleshoot, babysit, defuse, procure, reconnoiter--do whatever needs to be done in Vikorn's ongoing battle with Army General Zinna for control of Bangkok's network of illegal enterprises. And though Tietsin is enlightened and (eerily) charismatic, he also has forty million dollars' worth of heroin for sale. If Sonchai truly wants to be an initiate into Tietsin's "apocalyptic Buddhism," he has to pull off a deal that will bring Vikorn and Zinna to the same side of the table. Further complicating the challenge is Tara: a Tantric practitioner who captivates Sonchai with her remarkable otherworldly techniques. Here is Sonchai put to the extreme test--as a cop, as a Buddhist, as an impossibly earthbound man--in John Burdett's most wildly inventive, darkly comic, and wickedly entertaining novel yet"
ISBN:2147483647
Author:John Burdett
The Girl on the Train
EVERY DAY THE SAMERachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.UNTIL TODAYAnd then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Paula Hawkins
The Eye of Heaven
Baffin Island: Sam and Remi Fargo are on a climate-control expedition in the Arctic, when to their astonishment they discover a Viking ship in the ice, perfectly preserved—and filled with pre-Columbian artifacts from Mexico.
How can that be? As they investigate, tantalizing clues about a link between the Vikings and the legendary Toltec feathered-serpent god Quetzalcoatl—and a fabled object known as the Eye of Heaven—begin to emerge. But so do many dangerous people.
Soon the Fargos find themselves on the run through jungles, temples, and secret tombs, caught among treasure-hunters, crime cartels, and those with a far more personal motivation for stopping them. The solution to a thousand-year-old mystery awaits them at the end of the chase—if they manage to survive it.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Clive Cussler, Russell Blake
The King’s Curse
The final novel in the Cousins’ War series, the basis for the critically acclaimed Starz miniseries, The White Queen, by #1 New York Times bestselling author and "the queen of royal fiction” (USA TODAY) Philippa Gregory tells the fascinating story of Margaret Pole, cousin to the "White Princess,” Elizabeth of York, and lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon. Regarded as yet another threat to the volatile King Henry VII’s claim to the throne, Margaret Pole, cousin to Elizabeth of York (known as the White Princess) and daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, is married off to a steady and kind Lancaster supporter—Sir Richard Pole.
For his loyalty, Sir Richard is entrusted with the governorship of Wales, but Margaret’s contented daily life is changed forever with the arrival of Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, and his beautiful bride, Katherine of Aragon. Margaret soon becomes a trusted advisor and friend to the honeymooning couple, hiding her own royal connections in service to the Tudors. After the sudden death of Prince Arthur, Katherine leaves for London a widow, and fulfills her deathbed promise to her husband by marrying his brother, Henry VIII. Margaret’s world is turned upside down by the surprising summons to court, where she becomes the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine. But this charmed life of the wealthiest and "holiest” woman in England lasts only until the rise of Anne Boleyn, and the dramatic deterioration of the Tudor court.
Margaret has to choose whether her allegiance is to the increasingly tyrannical king, or to her beloved queen; to the religion she loves or the theology which serves the new masters. Caught between the old world and the new, Margaret Pole has to find her own way as she carries the knowledge of an old curse on all the Tudors."
"
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Philippa Gregory
Jacob Aliet –
Confessions of Nairobi Men is a compilation of true stories told to Joan Thatiah by Nairobi men. It’s a wilting catalogue of the importunity of human suffering, human frailty, hope springing eternal, and the tyranny of fate.
Joan doesn’t build up tension and ease the reader into the stories. None of that namby-pamby, preliminary hand-holding, warm-up stuff. She just opens fire from page one. If you were chewing something, you stop chewing and only realize you were eating several hours later when she allows you to come up for air.
The first story starts with a woman found by her husband hanging from the rafters in an unfinished house in Syokimau. No time wasted. The police come and throw him in Jail. That’s when Joan fills you in on the build-up to that opening scene. You see a couple’s marriage unraveling like a tragedy between the pages leaving you dumbstruck.
Joan continues to grab your attention by the scruff of the collar and drags it to the next story, which involves a teenager who pushed his father over a balcony to his death because he could no longer stand seeing his mother being beaten to a pulp. He was promptly jailed. Joan patiently takes you through how his life became undone after that. It is like watching an open wound cleaned and then sewn up without anesthesia.
Before you have recovered, Joan drags you into deeper waters, walking you through the darkest paths men walk in Nairobi and beyond. Fifteen times. In the end, you’re yourself damaged and overcome with emotion about the suffering that some men go through in Nairobi.
The stories, fifteen of them, all packed with harrowing narrations of cuckoldry, fatherlessness, sexual abuse, brutal female hypergamy, poor decisions, poverty, separation, degeneracy, and crime, shed light onto the kinds of backgrounds and experiences that shape many men in Nairobi. Indeed, Nairobi itself, the concrete jungle, comes off as an incorporeal spirit that can accept you or reject you. It can chew you and spit you out.
Joan does an excellent job of excavating the formative experiences that shape many men and the choices they make later on in life.
The most striking thing for me is the depth of the stories. All of them are profound and you can see how childhood experiences and family inexorably shape people’s characters, fortunes, and ultimately, their fate.
Some of the stories, like one in which a poor man falls in love with a poor woman they work with in a roadside kibanda, remind us about something Chogozie Obioma wrote in Orchestra of Minorities: The mind of a man in despair can produce a fruit which, although it may appear shiny on the surface, is filled to bursting with worms.
Joan’s portrayal of how parenting and childhood experiences impact us is masterful and thought-provoking.
This is a book that should be read by every man and every parent.
You get to appreciate firsthand how fatherlessness impacts children and shapes them later on in life. You get to behold, up close, how a weak or violent father affects boys. How your household is a far-reaching character-influencing force. Joan does a good job handling how sexual abuse shapes men’s sexual experiences and the influence of childhood trauma on us.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.