Nairobi · 1976 · citedGoing Down River Road
Meja Mwangi
Mwangi's gritty novel of post-independence Nairobi follows Ben, a cashiered ex-soldier drifting through casual labour, cheap drink and cheaper rooms in the raw underside of the booming city. The real Nairobi is its stage: the bars and flophouses of the notorious River Road, the high-rise construction site where Ben sweats to raise a tower he will never enter, the shanty rooms of the poor, and the gleaming modern centre going up on their backs.
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