Binyavanga stood shoulders above his peers and wrote ahead of his time

The late Binyavanga Wainaina. [FILE]

No one among the pantheon of Kenya's 21st-Century literary greats is more easily recognisable than the late Binyavanga Wainaina.

Born Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina in now-Nakuru City on January 18, 1971, he was variously a memoirist, short-story writer and journalist venerated by Time Magazine, in its annual Time 100 series, as “one of the most influential people in the world”, credentials even he himself impugned.