Episode 15: Joe Khamisi interview (with Prestige Books).

Writing Africa Podcast

Joe Khamisi has had a long history of public service in Kenya. For many years he worked as a journalist before transitioning into civil service and then parliament. When his legislative career ended, he wrote the nonfiction titles The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator (2011), Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey In Freedom (2014), The Wretched Africans (2016), and Looters And Grabbers: 54 Years of Corruption and Plunder by the Elite, 1963 – 2017 (2018). His latest book The Bribery Syndrome: How Multinational Corporations Collude with Dictators to Raid Africa's Natural Resources was published in 2019.

In an in-depth interview, Khamisi shared why he had to write a book about the slavery on the East African coast, how a dysfunctional Kenyan publishing industry forced him to go the self-publishing route, and how a pirated copy of his book Looters And Grabbers started circulating in Kenyan WhatsApp groups.

We would like to thank Prestige Books for sponsoring this edition of the podcast. Prestige Books is your favourite bookstore for African and other literatures with branches on Mama Ngina Street in the Central Business District and at the Lavington Mall.