The East African issue of Binyavanga Wainaina’s memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place, published by Kwani Trust, will be launched in Nairobi on 1st June 2012.

This is a signature moment in East Africa’s contemporary literature. As Founding Editor of Kwani Trust, Binyavanga Wainaina dedicated a lot of time and energy in setting up Kwani?, shelving away the book, which he started in the late nineties, to only finish it when he set aside active editorial duties at the Trust.  Kwani Trust celebrates the launch of the book and appreciates the sacrifice on its behalf.

And on Madaraka Day, the East African launch will provide an opportunity for Kwani Trust to not only give thanks to Binyavanga Wainaina but also to recognize the crystallization of his literary concerns, a territory he made his own, over 8 years as editor, and now in the few hundred pages of the book. The book exemplifies Binyavanga’s fitting struggle to find a language, something that also led him, to set up Kwani?, to tell the story of what he sees as the ‘place’ that he has always written about.

In wordplay, alone, this memoir  questions what choices a contemporary writer can make on the words he chooses to signify the space he intuitively recognizes and occupies.  And the book wonderfully enters our space, one which does not lend itself to easy narratives, and is best captured by a mix of history, anecdote, day to day detail and observation, realistic dialogue and many other tropes. The book has received universal recognition by appearing on Oprah's Monthly Book Club, listed on Publisher's Weekly and been reviewed extensively in the international press.

We look forward to the launch of the East African issue of One Day I Will Write About This Place and welcomes you all to the launch
 
Billy Kahora
Managing Editor

Related Links

• Book details: One Day I will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
• Buy the ebook here