The River Between

The River Between explores life on the Makuyu and Kameno ridges of Kenya in the early days of white settlement. Faced with an alluring, new religion and ‘magical’ customs, the Gikuyu people are torn between those who fear the unknown and those who see beyond it. Some follow Joshua and his fiery brand of Christianity while others proudly pursue tribal independence.

In the midst of this disunity stands Waiyaki, a dedicated visionary born to a line of prophets. He struggles to educate the tribe – a task he sees as the only unifying link between the two factions – but his plans for the future raise issues which will determine both his own and the Gikuyu’s survival.

QUOTES FROM THE RIVER BETWEEN
“…it would be good to reconcile all these antagonisms.”

About the author:
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Kenyan teacher, novelist, essayist, and playwright, whose works function as an important link between the pioneers of African writing and the younger generation of postcolonial writers. After imprisonment in 1978, Ngũgĩ abandoned using English as the primary language of his work in favor of Gikuyu, his native tongue. The transition from colonialism to postcoloniality and the crisis of modernity has been a central issue in a great deal of Ngũgĩ’s writings.