Going Down River Road

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.

Ben

River Road (the bars)

Chapter 1

Ben drinks and drifts along River Road, among the touts, prostitutes and fellow labourers of the city's underside, blunting the wreck of his life with beer. Mwangi makes the street a whole world of the urban poor, vivid, brutal and companionable, that the shining new Nairobi would rather not see.

Chapter 1

explicit The novel's heart is River Road, the real and notorious downtown Nairobi street of cheap bars, lodgings and hustles that gives the book its title.

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