Njambi McGrath

An incisive novel laying bare the contradictory societal response to gender, sex and redemption. Rinsing Mũkami's Soul looks at revenge as a powerful tool for reclamation when young Mũkami's carefully ordered life is cruelly thrust into scandal.

Njambi McGrath, award winning author of Through the Leopard's Gaze, delivers this stunning debut novel examining the validity of fury as response when a young Kenyan girl's mistakes in first love are ruthlessly held against her by a paternalistic society.

Mũkami is a young scholarship student at a prestigious boarding school. She has a clear path ahead of her, but a deceptive smile, a school expulsion and an impossible pregnancy see her well ordered life hurtling towards complete and utter disarray.

Facing disappointment from her family and finding that innocence is not a strong enough place from which to mount a defence, she declares revenge. This charged novel asks us to question why girls and women are often left to fight for justice from lonely places in societies that prefer them silenced.

In her captivating memoir Through the Leopard's Gaze, Njambi McGrath details the harrowing circumstances of her life as a young girl in Kenya, who one fateful night was beaten to a pulp and left for dead. Thirteen-year-old Njambi, fearing her assailant would return to finish her, courageously escaped, walking through the night in the Kenyan countryside, risking wild animals, robbers and murderers, before being picked up by two shabbily dressed but safe men. She buries the memories of that fateful day and night, and years later ends up in London with a British husband and children. Then one day a simple unassuming wedding invitation arrives in her mailbox causing her to have to confront the remnants of a past she had thought was behind her.

This is a book about survival, and courage when all else fails. It's a searingly honest examination of human cruelty and strength in equal measure.