Taste of Death.

Notes

A scarce Kenyan thriller inspired by the publication of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Weep Not, Child. Meja Mwangi (1948-2025) published his first book in 1973 but this title, published two years later, is understood to have been written much earlier - one obituary claims it was completed while Mwangi was still a teenager, which is possible: its inspiration appeared when Mwangi was 16. Like Weep Not, Child, Taste of Death deals with the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, but is a thriller with fewer literary pretensions. It was published in the East African Publishing House's African Secondary Readers series, 'a carefully planned series of absorbing books designed to satisfy the literature course needs of lower and middle secondary forms'. Mwangi won the inaugural Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1974.