One Day I Will Write About This Place A Memoir [Paperback]

A KenyanPortrait of the Artist as a Young Man. . . suffused by a love affair with language. Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of 2011

In this vivid and compelling memoir, Binyavanga Wainaina tumbles through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him. InOne Day I Will Write About This Place, named a 2011New York Timesnotable book, Wainaina brilliantly evokes family, tribe, and nationhood in joyous, ecstatic language.

Glimmering, strobe-lit language . . . a complex, cosmopolitan African experience too rarely depicted in books. Teju Cole, GQ's Book of the Year Club

Harried reader, I'll save you precious time: skip this review and head directly to the bookstore for Binyavanga Wainaina's standup-and-cheer coming-of-age memoir,One Day I Will Write About This Place. Although written by an East African and set in East and Southern Africa, Wainaina's book is not just for Afrophiles or lovers of postcolonial literature. This is a book for anyone who still finds the nourishment of a well-written tale preferable to the emptycalorie jolt of a celebrity confessional or Swedish mystery. Alexandra Fuller, The New York Times Book Review

Binyavanga Wainainais the founding editor ofKwani?, a leading African literary magazine. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and has written forVanity Fair,Granta, andThe New York Times. Wainaina directs the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.