Kenyans too steeped in rat race to see graft manholes ahead

NAIROBI: One of the most remarkable things about literary art is that, at its breathtaking finest, it transports you from the here-and-now to beautiful countrysides of ideas and transcendental sublimity. In the deft hands of gifted writers, ordinary and mundane things are captured in so vivid and witty expressions that we start looking at writers as extraordinary beings.

It is this ability to observe and clothe nuances and imagined people and events with moving words that makes us think of writers as prophets. Indeed, in some traditional African societies, poets were ranked just a rung below the gods. But those who have studied literary appreciation and criticism will tell you that writers are just differently gifted mere mortals. What sets them apart is that they are able to detach themselves from the everyday rat race called life and observe the shenanigans, the foibles and infirmities we exhibit in the universal theatre called life.