Browse Items (56 total)

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…

Written with many features taken from the oral tradition, this play is about the attempts of women to heave the “mother- pillar,” which symbolizes peace and prosperity for women. Their attempts fail due to lack of unity and tenacity.

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This autobiographical work, a sequel to the previously published "Maisha yangu", was written when Robert was 50 years of age, just a few years before his death in 1962. Robert frequently interspersed passages of poetry into his prose texts. In this…

This work consists of correspondence written by Shaaban Robert to his half-brother, Yusuf Ulenge. The letters were collected and published posthumously, over forty years after Robert’s death. As stated in the note of the KU catalog record, the…

This work is the second installment of Robert’s autobiography, although it remains to this day the first to be published. He once wrote an autobiographical essay about his childhood and youth to the time of his marriage in 1936, but it has never…

A praise poem commemorating the life and accomplishments of the Zanzibari Taarab musician, Siti binti Saad.

Also included in the exhibit from this series are Insha na mashairi v. 5; Utubora mkulima v.8; Siku ya watenzi wote v. 9.

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Shaaban Robert was, above all, a poet. As noted on the back cover of this volume, “. . . the poems appearing here cover the entire spectrum of human existence: youth and old age, morality and religion, politics, the beauty and signification of…

In his last novels, such as the two above written shortly before his death in 1962, Robert became more reformist in principle and critical of his times. Utubora mkulima is an attack on capitalist society and its evils. Perhaps as a sequel in this…

Shaaban Robert is credited with introducing the essay (insha) into Swahili Literature.

Utenzi wa zinduko la ujamaa is one of several political poems written in the 1970’s following the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar under one government to form the Republic of Tanzania. The author describes the establishment of the socialist system…