Kuwisha trilogy

2 primary works 3 total works planned

Last Orders At Harrods

by Michael Holman

Published 1 March 2007

Charity Mupanga is the widowed owner of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot) - a favourite meeting place for the movers and shakers of Kibera. While she can handle most challenges, from an erratic supply of Worcestershire sauce, the secret ingredient in her cooking, to the political tensions in East Africa's most notorious slum and a cholera outbreak that follows the freak floods in the state of Ubuntu, some threatening letters from London lawyers are beginning to overwhelm her.

Well-meant but inept efforts to foil the lawyers by Edward Furniver, a former fund manager who runs Kibera's co-operative bank, bring Harrods International Bar to the brink of disaster, and Charity close to despair. In the nick of time an accidental riot, triggered by World Bank President Hardwick Hardwicke's visit to the slum, coupled with some quick thinking by Titus Ntoto, the 14-year-old leader of Kibera's toughest gang, the Mboya Boys United Football Club, help Charity - and Harrods - to triumph in the end.

Fatboy and the Dancing Ladies

by Michael Holman

Published 3 May 2007

Ferdinand Mlambo, the youngest boy ever to become senior kitchen toto at State House, is in deep trouble. Disloyalty to Kuwisha's Life President Ngwazi Nduka has not only cost him his prestigious job: the sinister chief steward to the president, Lovemore Mboga, has humiliated Mlambo by stripping him of his name. Word goes out: henceforth, he will be known as Fatboy. But with the help of Titus Ntoto, leader of the notorious Mboya Boys gang of teenage street children, Mlambo recovers his name and his dignity. In this sequel to his widely praised debut, "Last Orders at Harrods", Michael Holman again combines the insights of someone brought up in Africa with the experience of nearly 20 years as the "London Financial Times'" Africa editor. With a sharp observant pen, he describes a world of abandoned street children, corrupt politicians, disillusioned journalists, well meaning aid workers, celebrity outsiders, self-deceiving donors, and resilient residents of Kireba, Kuwisha's worst slum - where the tough but maternal Mrs Charity Tangwenya Mupanga, presides over the popular rendezvous, Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot).