Carcase for Hounds

About Meja Mwangi

Carcase for Hounds by Meja Mwangi

Carcase for Hounds concerns the Mau Mau liberation struggle during the latter days of British colonial rule and attempts, by the actions of the main protagonists, to show how Mau Mau was organized and why it took so long for the colonial government to defeat them. The novel concerns the conflict between the fictional General Haraka, a leader of the Mau Mau, and British forces representing the colonial government, led by Captain Kingsley. It is a lean, tense, and almost cinematic novel that strips away the politics to focus on two men — one fighting for freedom, one for empire — and the brutal, exhausting reality of guerrilla warfare in the Kenyan highlands. Mwangi brings humanity to both sides without excusing the violence of either, creating one of the most balanced and gripping accounts of the Mau Mau conflict in Kenyan fiction. The novel was later adapted into a film.