Mrs. Shaw by Mukoma wa Ngugi

About Mukoma wa Ngugi

Mrs. Shaw by Mukoma wa Ngugi

Mrs. Shaw departs from the crime thriller format to tell the story of an unlikely relationship between a young Kenyan professor teaching in America and an elderly white woman who claims to have been deeply involved with African liberation movements. As their friendship develops, questions about memory, truth, race, and the complicated history of Western involvement in African politics come to the surface. Mukoma writes with wit and intelligence about the disorientation of the African intellectual in America — the exoticism, the projections, the loneliness — while also interrogating the romantic mythology that some Westerners construct around African struggle. It is a nuanced, ambitious, and often surprising novel that shows Mukoma expanding beyond genre into the full range of literary fiction.