Threads of Time

Mugo Theuri was plucked from his reporting job at the lawcourts in Nakuru after barely three months in post and driven to Nairobi for what would turn out to be 49 days of torture in the infamous Nyayo House. Jailed for four years, he joined the ‘Liberation University’, the study group in prison, and emerged a much more thoughtful and reflective man. He uses personal memoir to thread his personal experiences into the historical events in the country and the world.

His experience with the courts, and his attempt to get justice for his wrongful imprisonment enable him to reflect on the justice system, just as his average scholarship give him clarity of how the country’s systems and policies discriminate against the poor and frustrate the right to justice and education.

The candour with which Threads of Time is rendered allows the reader into the writer’s personal crisis in struggling to reconcile his father’s public role as headman during the Mau Mau war of independence in a context where most of his family were guerrillas in the forest, as well as his relationship with religion.