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One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir (2011)

by Binyavanga Wainaina(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1555975917 (ISBN13: 9781555975913)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Graywolf Press

review 1: I loved the experimental style, reminded me of Apollinaire's poems at times, sounds and words on the written page. It strikes me that this book has quite a few different sections where language changes. First, his childhood, subsequently university, becoming a conscious writer, and last political analyst and African observer. It doesn't feel disjointed but there are some sections that have clearly been written as self-standing articles and have been inserted in the book - e.g the last chapter? All the same it's a great book, my favourite section being the family reunion in Uganda. It's the language that counts here not so much the plot.
review 2: Really wonderful, absorbing memoir about growing up in Kenya in the 70s and 80s, being part of the first generation ... moreto be born after independence from British rule. Wainaina's prose is the real joy here, riffing on language, meandering but never rambling, often suggestive rather than direct, and only rarely getting away from itself. (This seems to happen more at the beginning of the book than later on.) I did want this to cohere a little more—it's not quite a memoir proper, but more than a series of vignettes—but was impressed enough that I will look out for more of Wainaina's work in the future. less

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