Njambi’s latest book/first novel…
Well, that is it in a nutshell… Comedian Njambi McGrath wrote an autobiography in 2020. (There’s a blog about it HERE.)
Now she has written a revenge novel.
So I chatted to her about it…
JOHN: You’re now being described as “a stand-up comic, author and political commentator”. So you’re on a roll.
NJAMBI: Maybe. In America, Comedy Dynamics acquired four of my comedy specials. In the UK, Next Up have five.
JOHN: And now you’re a debutante… Your first novel Rinsing Mũkami’s Soul has debuted.
NJAMBI: (LAUGHS)
JOHN: But you’ve already written a non-fiction autobiographical book: Through The Leopard’s Gaze.
NJAMBI: Writing a memoir was a lot easier. With a memoir, you already know the plot; you know the characters; you know it’s believable, because it actually happened. But, when you write fiction, you have to create a world and characters that are believable. It’s like creating a sculpture from nothing to something that has features.
JOHN: So why do fiction?
Njambi at the launch of her new book…
NJAMBI: Writing Through The Leopard’s Gaze, the non-fiction book, taught me a great deal. Although I knew the ‘plot’, it still had to have a thread for the reader to follow and engage with. I enjoyed crafting it and I did a lot of background research. When it was over, I felt I didn’t really have anything more to say about myself for now, but I wanted to tell a lot more about Kenya, about its history.
JOHN: So you wrote Rinsing Mũkami’s Soul…
NJAMBI: No. The first novel I wrote during lockdown was called Residents of the Ministry of Works. It had all sorts of characters. It was not published but, out of that first draft I did, I saw Mũkami living in this community. She doesn’t want to be there; she hates them; there is nothing good about her community. The published version of Rinsing Mũkami’s Soul was the 11th draft.
JOHN: Have you cannibalised that first Ministry of Works version so much in Rinsing Mũkami’s Soul that it can’t be used for a second novel?
NJAMBI: I don’t think I have. After writing that book I know a lot about the characters, so each character can have their own journey. The same community event can happen to them, but the characters are different: there’s the one who has an affair; there’s one that’s crooked; and so on. Individual stories. Just because they all share the same predicament, doesn’t mean each one doesn’t have a different story, a different journey.
I think Residents of the Ministry of Works may still be published. I signed a two-book deal.
I think it’s going to be a trilogy. Possibly more. I don’t think a second novel would be the end of these characters. They are so dynamic.
One of the characters in the novel is hiding something big, but I don’t know what it is.
JOHN: You only discovered the character was hiding something when you were writing the book?
NJAMBI: Yes. Some authors plan out what the whole book is going to be about before they start writing it. But, with me, a lot of the discoveries I make are when I am actually writing the book. I discover a lot when I’m writing.
Njambi discussing UK politics on the Channel 4 News…
JOHN: Did you know what the end of the book would be before you started?
NJAMBI: No. My mind doesn’t work like that.
The first book I wrote was about 87,000 words. Rinsing Mũkami’s Soul started off around 60,000 and got bigger with every draft. The published version was the 11th draft. So it’s just short of 90,000. 313 pages in PDF.
JOHN: People say the first novel is always autobiographical…
NJAMBI: Kind of.
JOHN: It’s set in 1980s Kenya…
NJAMBI: I grew up there. You harness a lot of what happened to you.
JOHN: Rinsing Mũkami’s Soul is said to be about “gender, sex, redemption, revenge”.
NJAMBI: Mũkami is a young girl. Sixteen. She has ambitions; she wants to be a geologist. She is very studious; an all-round good girl. She encounters a boy and falls in love. She is raped and becomes pregnant. The book is about her trying to get her life back on track. She has to find a way of having a safe abortion in a country where it is illegal.
JOHN: …in the 1980s.
NJAMBI: It is still illegal to this day. Half a million girls in Kenya go through this every single year. Some of them die; some of them have life-changing injuries. So Mũkami is in a predicament and has no-one to help her, because she doesn’t want to tell her mother who is ridden with problems because their community is being evicted. Mũkami’s father is dead; they are living with her mother’s boyfriend.
The book is basically about how all these men ruin her life. Women can be assaulted and it ruins their life; they can’t go back to what it was. I think the story will be identifiable for people round the world.
JOHN: A review I read said it had “brutal reality” but also “light humour”… That takes some clever writing!
NJAMBI: My publisher at Jacaranda Books said: “The first time I read it, I howled with laughter.”
JOHN: How did you manage that?
NJAMBI: You have to buy and read the book.
JOHN: It’s also about revenge…
NJAMBI: Yes. She feels wronged. She was a good girl. She did everything that was asked of her. But her life was completely derailed. She ends up in scenarios that are seedy and horrid. She thinks: Who are these people who put me here? I’m going to get revenge!… and she does.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 