The best-known novel by the Nobel Prize-nominated Kenyan author.
A Grain of Wheat follows a group of peasants whose lives have been affected by the 1952–1960 Emergency, set in the aftermath of the Mau Mau insurrection and on the eve of Kenya's independence from Britain. Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man tortured by a horrible secret, is at the centre of it all. A masterful storey unfolds as we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, as we learn of their tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta.
Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb.
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