Unbury Our Dead with Song

Written by Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ

Narrated by Elnathan John

A love letter to music, beauty, and imagination

In the seedy ABC boxing club in Nairobi, four musicians—The Diva, The Corporal, The Taliban Man, and Miriam—gather for a competition to see who can perform the best Tizita. Listening from the audience is Kenyan tabloid journalist
John Thando Manfredi, whose own life makes him vulnerable to the Tizita.

Desperate to learn more, he follows the musicians back to Ethiopia, hoping to learn the secret to the music from their personal lives and histories. His search takes him from the idyllic Ethiopian countryside to juke joints and raucous parties
in Addis Ababa where he quickly learns that there is more to these performers than meets the eye.

From the humble home life behind the Diva's glamorous façade, to the troubling question of the Corporal's military service history, Manfredi discovers that the many layers to this musical genre are reflected in the lives and secrets of
its performers. Unbury Our Dead with Song captures what it means to have an encounter with the sublime, and the complicated language of music, profound melancholia, and yearning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781705003862

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ was born in Illinois but raised in Kenya. His poetry and fiction has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing and his columns have appeared in the Guardian, the International Herald Tribune, Chimurenga, Los Angeles Times, South African Labour Bulletin and Business Daily Africa. He has been a guest on Democracy Now, Al Jazeera and the BBC World Service and his essays have appeared in World Literature Review, Black Commentator, Progressive Magazine and Radical History Review. His short stories have been published in Wasafiri, African Writing, Kenyon Review and St. Petersburg Review and his poems in the New York Quarterly, Mythium, Brick Magazine, Kwani? And Tin House Magazine.