Kenyan author reveals what it takes to publish a record ten books in a year

By Pauline Odhiambo

Stephen King, the staggeringly prolific and bestselling American novelist, once attributed his oeuvre to a strict regimen of writing at least 2,000 words daily, regardless of weekends or holidays.

In 2023, the award-winning Kenyan novelist, poet and scriptwriter Alexander Nderitu scripted a new African publishing record with the highest number of books by a single author in a year.

The 45-year-old's accomplishment had been about 20 years in the making, spanning almost his entire writing career. Just that he didn't know about it until a quirk of fate unravelled to him the infinite possibilities of his creativity.

Unfinished scripts

A life-threatening experience in 2021 galvanised Alex's resolve to release ten books in a year.

"I was down with Covid and, ironically, admitted to the same hospital where I was born. Being in that hospital bed felt like a full-circle moment because I thought I was going to die," he recounts to TRT Afrika.

"All I could think about were the unfinished scripts I had worked on for over 20 years. So, I promised myself I would publish as many of my scripts as possible if I recovered."

Alex not only lived to tell the tale of his brush with the virus but also did a career reboot.

Gone was the procrastination and the bogey of writer's block. He set an ambitious goal to finish at least one book a month.

Like magic, Alex found himself churning out one work after another, completing scripts that he had started long ago but could never take to fruition or building on projects that had already earned him plaudits.

“Hannah and the Angel is a short comedic play that won a prize from the Theatre Company in 2004. I thought I could add to it and turn it into a book, which I did in 2023," says Alex.

"The new version is in two volumes, hip-hop oriented, and includes concepts of battle rap. I am in talks with a theatre group about staging it soon."

Another of his works is Kenyan Theatre: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, a lengthy critical treatise based on an article of the same name first published in 2014.

"That article is my most widely-read paper, wherein I ask why there isn't a major play about the late Kenyan environmentalist Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangarĩ Maathai," Alex tells TRT Afrika.

"If South Africa can have a musical on Winnie Mandela, and Nigeria has one on (musician) Fela Kuti, then it follows that Maathai, the first woman in East and Central Africa to be awarded a doctorate, should have at least one major play on her life."

So intense was his desire to see a play about Maathai that he wrote one himself in 2021.

Life meets fiction

The Talking of Trees, a play based on the life and times of Maathai, spans eight acts rather than the standard three-act structure.

Alex, who took three years to finish the play, chose a longer format "because she lived quite the full and colourful life".

Nobel Prize winner Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and UNEP's Million Tree Campaign, spawned a tree-planting wave in Kenya, taking on developers out to grab the Karura Forest, an urban 2,500-acre reserve in the capital city of Nairobi.

The Talking of Trees was initially released in paperback in 2021 after plans to stage the play were shelved indefinitely due to the pandemic.

"Although The Talking of Trees is based on actual events, it is important to note that it is a work of fiction. In my play, President (Daniel Toroitich arap) Moi raps after winning an election," Alex explains.

"The play also doesn't end with Maathai’s death; it only reveals the depth of her legacy."

Debut with digital

Alex penned his first novel, When the Whirlwind Passes, in 2001. This crime story was only available as an e-book until its paperback release in 2022.

"I wanted to be a thriller writer like Frederick Forsyth or Jeffrey Archer. But there were only about five reputable publishers in Kenya in the early 2000s, and all of them specialised in publishing school textbooks and other academic materials," Alex, who studied information technology, tells TRT Afrika.

"Working in IT made me realise that only a few people were aware of digital books at the time. So, I intentionally released my first novel as an e-book."

As a novelist, poet, playwright, and critical writer, Alex's bibliography includes 15 literary works, many of which have been published in three Kenyan dialects and translated into Arabic, Chinese, Czech, French, Japanese, and Swedish.

In 2017, a Kenyan daily named him among the country’s "Top 40 Under 40 Men". The script for Hannah and the Angel made it to the shortlist in a South Africa-based playwriting completion two years later.

An excerpt from the manuscript of The Talking of Trees – titled "Freedom Corner" – finished runner-up at the IHRAF African Human Rights Playwriting Prize contest in 2021. The following year, Alex's short story, The Hummingbird, took third place at the Share Africa Climate Change Fiction Awards.

Alex's other book titles released in 2023 include The Stacy Walker Interview, King Bure Is Dead!, A Body Made For Sin, What's Wrong With This Picture?, Yuppies, and This Time With Feeling: Essays on Theatre.

His advice to aspiring writers? "You can pursue a writing career if you have conviction and feel it's important to your existence. It's not something you do for fame or money or clout."

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