Library Weekly

On 22 July 2003 Kenyan humourist, Wahome Mutahi, died at the Kenyatta National Hospital after 137 days in a coma. He was popularly known as Whispers after the name of the column he wrote for The Daily Nation from 1982 to 2003, offering a satirical view of the trials and tribulations of Kenyan life.

Mutahi was equally well known in theatre where he wrote and acted in English- and Kikuyu-language plays that caricatured Kenya's society and politics using his company Igiza Productions. There is a memorial bust of him at the Kenya National Theatre. Outside of Kenya, he wrote humour columns for Ugandan publications The Monitor and Lugambo.

Among his books are Three Days on the Cross which won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature (1992), Jail Bugs, Doomsday, and How To Be a Kenyan, based on his newspaper columns. Others include The Miracle Merchants, Mr Canta, Hassan the Genie, The Ghost of Garba Tula and Just Wait and See. All his life he expressed his solidarity with the average Kenyan through his refrain: "I am neither too foolish nor too clever."

In 2006 the Kenyan Publishers Association set up the Wahome Mutahi Literary Prize in recognition of the late Wahome Mutahi's contribution to publishing in Kenya.

(Source: Wikipedia accessed on 28 June, 2024)

Selected Publications

Maupeu, Hervé, en Patrick Mutahi, Wahome Mutahi’s world (Nairobi, 2005).

Mutahi, Wahome, Doomsday (Nairobi, 1999).

Mutahi, Wahome, How to be a Kenyan (Nairobi,1996).

Mutahi, Wahome, Three days on the cross (Nairobi, 1991).

Mutahi, Wahome, The house of doom (Nairobi, 2004).

Mutahi, Wahome, Wahome Karengo en John N Nyagah, The miracle merchant (Nairobi, 2003).

Mutahi, Wahome, Whispers & Camisassius: 14 Whispers’ stories published between 1991 and 1997 (Nairobi, 2002).

Outa, G. Odera, Performing power: ethnic citizenship, popular theatre and the contest of nationhood in modern Kenya (Charleston, 2009).

How to be a Kenyan by Wahome Mutahi | What has changed in 25 Years? (Book Review)