Peter Kimani: Dance of the Jakaranda (2017)
342 pages
English language
Published Nov. 6, 2017
Set in the shadow of Kenya's independence from Great Britain, this story reimagines the special circumstances that brought black, brown, and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation.--
A real slog, there are moments of clever wordplay but the narrative jumble and totally bewildering time shifts lost me many times.
The best thing I can say about this novel is that it introduced me to an era of Kenya’s British colonial history about which I knew nothing. Aside from that, however, the plot was thin and contrived, and the characters seemed to operate solely in service of the plot devices, which in turn operated solely in service of providing a historical narrative. The way the different characters’ lives become intertwined at the end was predictable and, ultimately, an unsatisfying conclusion for a novel that had already gone on too long.
