In this painstakingly researched and insightful book, Professor Peter Kagwanja and co-author, Humphrey Ringera, offer a lucid panoramic view of contemporary Kenyan politics peered through the lenses of one of the iconic figures of the country’s post-Mau Mau power elite — Kiraitu Murungi.
The authors of this buy-one-get-three narrative depart radically from the orthodox biographical writing, weaving the life story of Murungi together with the chronicles of the Mau Mau roots of freedom and the epic rise of a post-colonial power elite as the most significant development in the last half-century of Kenya’s independence.
Arguably the best political portrait of a Kenyan politician since David Goldsworthy’s Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget, the book succeeds in capturing the palpably tense political atmosphere, hustle and bustle and the risk-prone elbowing for power in the run-up to the 2013 elections.
The authors bring out the good, the bad and the ugly of the new Kenyan power elite in politics, academy, military and business as the generation with the historic mission to deliver the country to stable democracy and prosperity or push it down the cliff of anarchy, state failure and decay.
Kiraitu Murungi is a central actor in this unfolding national drama.
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