Mau Mau and the Kikuyu
Louis Leakey’s short study, written in 1952 as the Mau Mau emergency began. Leakey grew up among the Kikuyu and spoke their language, and here he sets out their customs, land grievances and religious life to explain the movement to a British readership. It is now read as a primary document of the period as much as an analysis of it.
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Adam Foulds
He was a Christian and very much a believer, but also a doctrinaire Darwinist. What’s interesting about his take on the Mau Mau uprising and what it did to the Kikuyu people is that, despite his integration and his knowledge of them, he doesn’t at all describe the kinds of systematic social deprivation that colonial settlers produced for the Kikuyu.
Interview · February 2010
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