Browse Items (57 total)

Kiswahili translation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Interestingly, in the illustration appearing on the cover as well as those throughout the text, Alice is depicted as an African girl.

Call Number: PR4611 .A7184 1967

A historical play set in the Kenya coastal town of Mombasa during the Portuguese occupation. The story revolves around a local potentate, Hassan bin Yusuf, who attempts without success to avoid war with the Portuguese. It is the only Kenyan Swahili…

The earliest Swahili poet of note whose works have survived to the present day is Fumo Liyongo. Dating his life and work, and hence dating the emergence of the Swahili language itself from its Arabic origins, have been a matter of considerable…

A collection of praise poems of Jomo Kenyatta, first President of Kenya.

Call Number: PL8704.A2 W3

A collection of praise poems about President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya.

Call Number: PL8704 .A2 W33

This is a “local color” novelette that is another very early work of Kiswahili prose. In its depiction of life in a typical Zanzibari village, it is perhaps more informative of local customs than of notable literary value. The two main characters,…

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is quite possibly the most politicized text to be translated into the Swahili language. The text first appeared in 1967, the same year as the ujamaa socialist scheme was introduced in Tanzania. It was meant by the…

A play based on the ‘Otieno case’ that took place in western Kenya in 1987. The case, involving the death of a well-known Luo lawyer, divided Kenya public opinion at the time and led to ethnic conflict. The controversy in the case ensued between the…

Pg 59 - English Translation

Utendi wa Mwana Kupona [Mwana Kupona’s Poem] is one of the most popular poems in Kiswahili literature. It was written around 1858 by Mwana Kupona binti Mshamu (c. 1810-1860) for her daughter, Mwana Hashima binti Sheikh…

With the conquest of East African peoples by Germany in Tanganyika and by the British in Kenya, the realities of colonial politics led to further secularization and, along with it, indigenization of thematic material in utenzi poetry. Utenzi wa…