« Qu’est-ce que ça te fait à toi, l’homme noir d’Amérique, d’être au Kenya ? » Voilà une question qui taraude l’inspecteur Ishmael.
French thrill seekers and crime fiction readers rejoice, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ’s Nairobi Heat has been translated.
The French edition of the Kenyan author’s debut novel is titled Là où meurent les rêves, or ‘The Place Where Dreams Go to Die’.
Mũkoma, who is the son of the world-renowned author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, revealed the news on Twitter:
French translation of Nairobi Heat now available – thank you Benoîte Dauvergne for translating the novel into its "afterlife" @BenoiteTrad https://t.co/ecETGJyuvw
— Mukoma Wa Ngugi (@MukomaWaNgugi) April 23, 2018
About the book:
A cop from Wisconsin pursues a killer through the terrifying slums of Nairobi and the memories of genocide.
In Madison, Wisconsin, it’s a big deal when African peace activist Joshua Hakizimana—famous for saving hundreds of people from the Rwandan genocide—accepts a position at the university. When a young girl is found murdered on his doorstep. For local police Detective Ishmael—an African-American in an ‘extremely white’ town—it seems like the kind of crime that happens in an area where the Ku Klux Klan still holds rallies.
The translation is another personal coup for Mũkoma, who was recently awarded tenure at Cornell University in New York.
- Efemia Chela is Francophone and Contributing Editor; follow her on Twitter.
