Kenyan academic, writer, and editor Chris Wanjala has passed on. Prof Wanjala who was the chairman of the Book Development Council of Kenya died on October 15, 2018.
Chris Wanjala was one of the most recognisable names in the Kenyan literary community having spent many years as a professor at the University of Nairobi. He had written many papers and books on African letters starting with Standpoints on African Literature published by East African Literature Bureau in 1973. Since then he wrote dozens of papers with titles like The East African Writer and Society (1974), African Response to Negritude and Pan-Africanism (1974), and The New Jerusalem in African Literature and Literary Criticism (1980). Check out more of his work here.
Apart from his academic work, he also made contributions to prose with Memories We Lost a short story anthology, Drums of death (2005) and poetry with Singing with the Night: a collection of East African verse (1974). He even edited Never Forgive Father (1971) by G.K. Muruah.
The Prof who has been sickly in recent years reportedly died from a short illness while receiving treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret.
At the time of his death he was the chairman of the Book Development Council of Kenya.
Read more about the late Chris Wanjala here.
May he rest in peace.
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