Kenya

Five books that take readers beyond Anglophone perspectives

A nation’s rapid population growth and its complex religious impacts

Philip Jenkins recommends the best recently published books in his field.

"Maybe 5 percent of refugees are ever resettled. Meanwhile, human life is always more than survival."

Owuor's novel wrestles with Kenya's bitter remnants of colonialism. Yet it suggests that the future can be shaped by people who are willing to incorporate the past with honesty and integrity.

Last weekend's This American Life included a great Planet Money segment about GiveDirectly, a charity that gives poor Kenyans not food or equipment or livestock or training but cash. The idea is that, whatever risks or downsides exist in just giving people money, these are outweighed by a) extremely low overhead, and b) the fact that the poor actually know best what they need.

“Nairobi has been bombed,” said Amina Bakari, my Kenyan host mother. I'd woken up late that morning 15 years ago.

Kenyan Muslims are a marginalized minority. Many are concentrated in Coast Province, where unfair land distribution is a festering wound.

Orthodoxy's roots in Egypt and Ethiopia are ancient. In East Africa there is a younger movement: a native Orthodoxy, locally grown.