Beginning in Nairobi in 1956 during the final years of British colonial rule, we follow sixteen-year-old Paulina, a Luo woman who leaves her rural home to join her husband, Martin, in the city.

Her coming of age runs alongside Kenya’s own sprawl into independence. It follows the detention, political organising and the nascent postcolonial government as the rearrangement of class, gender and urban life all enter the novel as this constant thrum against whatever it hits. 

Paulina’s growing independence gives the novel its shape, while Martin’s mostly troubled relationship to politics and masculinity makes the private sphere inseparable from the larger national one. First published in Nairobi in 1986, the novel is now regarded as one of Macgoye’s major works. 

Virago Press, London, 1986. First UK edition. Paperback. Light shelf wear and rubbing to covers, with minor creasing at edges and corners. Pages lightly age-toned; internally clean and unmarked, binding firm. Very good condition.