Weapon of Hunger

by Meja Mwangi

Arrakan is the mother of calamity and great aunt to human suffering; a land that spawns wars, genocides, plagues and famines, human disasters of biblical proportions, and spews them onto the world with the wantonness of mad volcano. It is a persevering and generous land; a land that welcomes adventurers and mad men with open arms, promises bounteous treasures and boundless pleasures, but delivers, instead, a feast of unimaginable woes and unremitting cruelty. She is the visionary, the liberator, the sword of justice; sworn foe to anyone who would oppress her people. Her sole reason for living is to deliver her people from the shackles of neocolonial bondage, from the pseudo-socialist generals who have hijacked the revolution and slaughtered her dream and the aspirations of her people. He is a man of war, a merchant of death, a vile and despicable creature, or so she tells him; a selfish man who can't believe in any cause other than his own; a man incapable of love. When they first meet, she promises to shoot him dead herself, if it becomes necessary. Everyone wants to shoot Jack Adams, for reasons that have a lot to do with the fact that he is after his own and considers everything else, especially the tragic war, an extravagant waste of time. They spare Jack, each for their own reasons, and he eventually gives everyone enough good reasons to seriously want him dead. But he is not the only one who knows the might of the gun.

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2013

About the author

Meja Mwangi began his writing career in the 1970s, a decade after his more well-known compatriots such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Grace Ogot had been publishing their works. When he burst onto the scene with the award-winning Kill Me Quick in 1973, Mwangi was hailed in various quarters as a rising star in the East African literary constellation who was helping to disprove Taban lo Liyong's oft-cited claim that East Africa was a literary desert (Taban 1965, Nazareth 1976). Since then, Meja Mwangi has gone on to establish himself as one of the most prolific of Kenyan writers, publishing eleven novels in seventeen years in addition to short stories, children's books and working with a variety of projects in film. Mwangi's works have received awards in Kenya and abroad, they have been translated into six languages, and there are film versions of two of his novels.

For many Kenyan writers, the armed resistance to British colonialism in Kenya, which came to be known as the Mau Mau revolt and reached its height in the 1950s, was a far-reaching experience. [Meja Mwangi' Mau Mau novel] Weapon of Hunger is perhaps [his] best book yet. The picture he paints of the relentless quest for modern Africa is grim. What is most depressing, is that there seem to be no solutions. Western philanthropists, such as Jack Rivers, are portrayed in a favourable light as sincere people. All their energies, however, are expended on trying to understand Africa's problems and once they understand them they realise that the problems are beyond them. As for the Africans themselves, they could have provided solutions, but since they are lined up in warring factions, that is impossible. While the two sides fight on to the finish, will million of ordinary people continue to starve to dead? That is the questions which Meja Mwangi asks himself and which he asks the readers of Weapon.
(Excerpt from: Lynn Mansure, Weekly Review)