Patrick Oguru
1. The Concise Mastery by Robert Green.
Robert Green outlines a neat way of discovering your life’s purpose and your personal peculiarities that progressively help you develop your professional niche(s). These niches are supposed to be polished through mentorship and apprenticeship to guarantee success.
2. Across the Bridge by Mwangi Gicheru.
The protagonist Symon Chuma, is born in an under privileged family. His father is a useless drunkard while the mother is a housewife who tills the family’s half-acre plot to eke out a living. Two of his brothers are casual laborers while the other tills the same family plot (failures). Chuma ends up as a houseboy to a wealthy civil servant in Nairobi City and falls in love with his boss’s only daughter who he eventually impregnates. The relationship is hampered by the couple’s juxtaposed life statuses, forcing Chuma to hierarchically delve into fraud, outright theft then armed robbery as a shortcut to richness, hoping that richness would endear him to his lover’s family. Instead, the vices land him in jail. Thanks to a presidential pardon, he soon gets released from prison and reconciles with his lover and her family who in dramatic fashion accept him as a son-in-law.
3. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick.
Ralph Truitt is born into a wealthy family. His only sibling, mother and father pass-on as he is just starting to enjoy the luxuries life has to offer in his early adulthood away from home. This forces him to return home to practically assume his heirship of running the family’s vast business empire. He carries with him a penniless Italian aristocrat for a wife, with whom he fathers a daughter who dies in her early childhood. The woman bears another child, Antonio, with a worker, and this leads to a separation. After over a score years of secondary bachelorhood, he remarries a vixen called Catherine, who had preplanned the marriage with Antonio. The plan was to systematically poison Ralph to his death, then share the inheritance between themselves. The plan failed; Antonio was killed by Ralph, who decided to continue his relationship with pregnant Catherine as a wife.
4. Devil on the Cross by Ngugi Wa Thiongo.
First published in 1982, it is amazing to note that Ngugi’s observations still ring true to-date in so-called post-independence Africa. Fine, the colonialists physically ‘left’ but also virtually stayed in the form of corporations which are run by mostly black faces (proxies) who are happy to feed off the generous crumbs and leftovers of the profits made. But is it not a contextually global phenomenon; that there is a cemented hierarchy of economic affairs; from the wealth owners, the managers, the workers and the exploited/doomed!
5. Granta III, 2010.
This is a collection of poems, pictures, letters and short stories (sometimes excerpts from already published works or those in progress). Some of the notable poets and authors include Mark Twain, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Richard Russo. However, the most captivating witness story for me is by Janine di Giovanni – The Book of the Dead. It’s a dark account of the war in Bosnia, Sarajevo specifically which had about 300,000 inhabitants by then (1993), of which 11,000 were killed, 1,598 being children, and 19,000 injured. About 90% of the survivors were living under the burden of post-traumatic stress disorder. The storyteller painfully observes that every war unfortunately drowns out another; Rwanda drowned out Bosnia, Somalia drowned out Rwanda, Sierra Leone drowned out Somalia, Iraq drowned out Israel, Afghanistan drowned out Iraq…and the cycle continues.
6. Your Church, My Shrine by Law Ikay Ezeh.
The author explores the secret and dark world of witchcraft and sorcery, with dumbfounding precision and clarity. He portrays the extent to which the ‘prosperity gospel’ pastors go to attain dark powers to perform miracles and attract unsuspecting ‘sheep’ who clamour for immediate answers or solutions to their earthly problems. As the book depicts, the consequences of such paths are unbearable.
7. The Printmaker by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen.
The story revolves around March, now an orphaned male adult. Thea, the woman he hoped to fall in love with, had instead fallen in love with his only deceased sister, after which she left South Africa for New Zealand and got married to a male. He is a devoted printmaker but does not earn from his occupation. He is lazy and scared to pursue the difficult path of financial liberation, following past rejections of his works by art galleries. Mental trauma as a result of bereavement and heartbreak forced the man to recluse himself to solitary confinement. He lives off his late mother’s purse and, fortunately but tragically, meets his death before going broke.
8. My Spiritual Journey (In Search of God) by Enoka K. Bainomugisha.
The author, who is from a Christian background, notes but fails to harmonise some contradictions in Christianity (mainly chronological and archaeological facts). On that basis, his faith is affected, and he reasons that a practical approach to life is reassuring, other than relying on blind faith. His thoughts confirm the fact that there is a difference between knowing God and simply believing in Him. Belief presupposes doubt, whereas knowledge of God presupposes a mutual relationship based on experiences.
9. The Concubine by Elechi Amadi.
Ihouma, who is believed to be a sea goddess, incarnated in human form, indirectly leads to the death of three men who have attempted to have her for a wife. The author will compel you to cautiously disregard the knowledge herbalists and mediums hold about the spirit world and the effect of such knowledge.
This post was created with our nice and easy submission form. Create your post!
Written by
Did this story move you? Every gift goes directly to Patrick Oguru — writers on Muwado earn from reader appreciation, not algorithms. Even $1 makes a difference.
Muwado weekly chart
Get Africa’s top 10 stories every Thursday
No account needed — just your email.
Want to follow Patrick Oguru and get notified every time they publish?
Create a free Muwado account →