Maillu: Literary maverick who feels misunderstood

David Maillu sits down to answer questions during the interview at his other home in Lang’ata estate, Nairobi county, on March 17 /AMOL AWUOR /NICKLAS HALLEN

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The sight that greets you when you walk into the home of veteran writer David Maillu in Lang’ata estate, Nairobi, is hundreds of books stacked up in the sitting room.

The witty and controversial author made his own mark in the 70s with the thrillers Unit for Human Consumption (1973), My Dear Bottle (1973) and above all, After 4.30 (1974).

Now in his twilight years, the 85-year-old welcomes us warmly, dressed in a long-sleeved African print shirt and his unmistakable spectacles.

Despite being in his twilight years, he retains a wide interest in literature, with his collection ranging from academic studies of African writers to atlases, books about natural history and religious tomes.

He has more than 80 books to his name, and he is not done with writing. His most recent artistic creation is a 126-page novel interspersed with commentary about last year’s Gen Z protests over the Finance Bill 2024 that culminated in the storming of Parliament on June 25.

Push Gen Z, Push Harder: Storm of Social Revolution is part novel, part political treatise. It was written in less than three weeks.

By September, the book had already been published. Throughout our conversation, Maillu talks about his many novels not as freestanding works of literature but as responses to events and shifts in public debate.

Push Gen Z, Push Harder is a case in point, since it is not only a mix of prose fiction and political discourse, but also includes poetry and photographs from the protests.

In other words, the norms of the book industry have clearly been brushed aside to maximise its impact. Consequently, when asked about this eclectic mix of genres and media, Maillu shrugs and says that there is nothing more to it than wanting to find the most effective way to speak to the protesters.

Should it be read as a manifesto dedicated to the Gen Z protesters? “Yes,” he says. “I wanted to give them a tool to confront the (President William) Ruto regime. These Gen Z lack ideology, and that’s what I wanted to achieve in that book.”

He rises and walks to a table to show us a copy of his laminated Communal Party of Kenya certificate. He says we might just be talking to the country’s next President.

“Are you thinking of a revolution?” we ask. “Yes,” Maillu says emphatically. But more than a dramatic parliamentarian transformation, what seems to animate the veteran Kenyan writer now is a different kind of revolution, a spiritual and philosophical one.

It’s the mention of his idea of establishing a university to teach African witchcraft that lights him up.

METAPHYSICS PHILOSOPHY

Following in the footsteps of another pioneer Kenyan philosopher steeped in the study of African religions and traditions, John Mbiti, Maillu once wrote elsewhere that African witchcraft, “which holds an incredible volume of invaluable knowledge, is an awfully misunderstood and tabooed subject”.

“It was demonised by colonials who conspired to create the word ‘witch doctor’, an appellation that does not exist in African culture. The so-called ‘African witchcraft’ includes medicine, divinity and sorcery,” he said.

The type of knowledge system Maillu is advocating seems out of place as the world delves into the digital age, driven by fast-paced technology and now generative artificial intelligence.

He pauses, seemingly unamused by this observation, then answers by first accusing the Western world of being obsessed with empiricism, saying it is a civilisation that believes that “anything that does not comply with the five senses does not exist”.

Instead, Maillu argues fervently in favour of metaphysics, a philosophical concept that deals with such abstract concepts as identity, knowing, space, time and being.

He says it can better explain intricate events that happen in most African communities, even as the continent leaps into the terrain of scientific development and the uncharted waters of generative AI.

“The traditional African community has depended heavily on metaphysics,” he says.

He then qualifies this statement by giving an example. A child is born and given a name, let’s say that of the grandmother.

However, a few months later, the child starts crying uncontrollably, and no amount of modern medicine can calm the wailing infant. Then, elders knowledgeable in African ‘witchcraft’ are summoned to establish why the child is crying all the time.

After careful consideration, the elders conclude that the young girl was given the wrong name.

A dead relative, they argue, wants the child named after her. Immediately, the young girl is renamed after the deceased relative, and instantly the uncontrollable crying stops.

Maillu again pauses, this time for several seconds, then poses: “What do you think explains that?”

David Maillu takes a stroll in his garden during the interview /AMOL AWUOR /NICKLAS HALLEN

LITERARY CRITICISM

For a writer who revels in sparring with both the literary and political establishment, his take on starting a university for witchcraft studies should also be read as a metaphor for an alternative system of thought and imagination crucial in helping the country move forward.

Whether his desire will be actualised in the near future is not an easy guess for now, but what is certain is that Maillu is not done yet upsetting the status quo, just as he confidently did in his 1970s novels.

Even though Maillu is more keen to talk about political protests and his proposed university than the more aesthetic side of his work as an author, this seemingly flippant approach should be taken with a pinch of salt.

His vast oeuvre is not only diverse in terms of form and genre but also contains many works that clearly showcase his stylistic skill. This has not always been noted by critics, however, perhaps because of the often irreverent and humoristic content of his works.

Ever since the publication of his now cult classic After 4:30, a novel in verse about a female office worker who turns into a promiscuous femme fatale as night falls, Maillu’s literary works have been categorised by critics as popular literature.

As has often been pointed out, this is a term used by some critics to imply that an author speaks to the tastes of the common man by prioritising the sensational before aesthetic refinement.

One American critic described his works as “a harvest of weeds”, while a Kenyan critic went as far as to describe it as a “trashy and scabrous imitation of brothel and low life, especially yarned for the lowbrow reader in this country”.

EXPERIMENTAL WRITING

While undoubtedly loved by scores of readers, the term “popular” applies particularly badly to Maillu insofar as it implies low literary quality.

Because throughout his long career as a writer, he has never stopped experimenting. For example, After 4:30, whose explicit contents might have appealed to less discerning readers and repelled some moralists, is also a masterclass in experimentation with poetic metre and rhythm.

Another example is his novel The Broken Drum (1991), a more than 1,100 pages long epic novel about 200 years of Akamba life.

It includes sections in poetic verse and graphic images made by Maillu himself, which are not mere illustrations but constituent elements of this gargantuan multimedial work.

While Maillu is an eclectic thinker, writer and artist, everything he does is essentially part of the same lifelong project. As becomes clear to us in our conversation, he sees no significant difference between his roles as literary author, theologian, philosopher, political thinker and artist.

And key in his work is his natural impulse to respond to current events not by getting tangled up in ongoing debates and position-taking, but in his own maverick ways.

Just before we finish our tea and take our leave, a movie scene comes up in our conversation. It is from German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the Edge of the World (2007), a documentary about a polar station in Antarctica.

In the scene, thousands of penguins march from the interior to the coast. One penguin, however, goes in the opposite direction from its fellows, genetically conditioned to do so to safeguard the species’s survival in the event of a disaster.

It is seen hurrying away across the frozen landscape, seemingly unfazed by the fact that the herd is disappearing at the horizon behind him.

This, Maillu says, is how the artist must work. Someone must go the other way when others race in the same direction. “This is my fight,” he says, “and I hope it will continue very well.”