One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir - Softcover

Wainaina, Binyavanga

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555976247 ISBN 13: 9781555976248

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2012

Synopsis

"A Kenyan Portrait 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. In One Day I Will Write About This Place, named a 2011 New York Times notable book, Wainaina brilliantly evokes family, tribe, and nationhood in joyous, ecstatic language.

About this title

About the Author

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

Review

“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

Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1555976247
• ISBN 13: 9781555976248
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272