David's book about the 'Mau Mau' movement in Kenya, Land, Freedom and Fiction: History and Ideology in Kenya was originally published by Zed Books in 1985, and republished in 2017 as one of the first books published in the Zed Books African Cultural Archive series.  A copy of this book, which has been set as a set text at UCT in the past, will have been one of the books in the African Studies collection incinerated in the recent Jagger Library fire.

This now classic work examines the contrasting ways in which the Mau Mau struggle for land and independence in Kenya was mirrored, and usually distorted, by successive generations of English and white Kenyan authors, as well as by indigenous Kenyan novelists. Against the turbulent background of the Mau Mau Uprising, Dr Maughan-Brown explores the relationship between history, literary creation and the myths that societies cultivate. Spanning the breadth of colonial and post-colonial African literature, his subjects range from the colonialist authors Robert Ruark and Elspeth Huxley to the post-independence novels of Meja Mwangi and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

To read more or to purchase a copy, click HERE