How smartphones and textbooks squeezed out the popular novel

One of the most ironic observations about the 1980s through the early 1990s is that while printing and publishing technology meant only a few books could roll off the press, that was the time when the popular East African novel thrived.

By the popular novel, I loosely mean that unapologetically authentic mass-market fiction written primarily for entertainment rather than classroom use.

I mean the kind of nightlife that Tanzanian writer Ben R. Mtobwa explored in Dar es Salaam by Night, the kind of crime thriller Mwangi Gicheru managed to cobble together in The Double Cross and John Kiriamiti wrote in My Life in Crime, My Life with a Criminal: Milly’s Story, The Sinister Trophy and My Life in Prison.

There were also works in the Macmillan Pacesetters series such as David Maillu’s The Equatorial Assignment, among many others. There are, of course, contemporary examples. We have recent crime novels such as The Dead Came Calling by Nducu wa Ngugi, a suspense-filled thriller published by East African Educational Publishers.

Oxford University Press also published The Gambler by Ngumi Kibera, a novel that explores the moral and spiritual travails of a truck driver who trades away his soul in pursuit of wealth and power.

That said, it remains a fact that the popular novel was more popular in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in East Africa, unless I am missing something. In my youth, it was common to see someone on a matatu engrossed in a 500-page novel or a Mills & Boon romance, often carried by college girls keen to project a certain image.

For me and a small circle of friends, the favourites were Cold War-era crime and spy thrillers by Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum and Jack Higgins. Readers seeking more sensational fare turned to Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins, while fans of crime and detective fiction devoured works by Sidney Sheldon and James Patterson.

Even high school students had their favourites in the The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew collections, which inspired local adventure stories such as Moses Series by Barbara Kimenye. Long story short, reading novels was something of a social trend in Kenya.

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Today, perhaps due to the arrival of the smartphone, you are more likely to find everyone in a matatu glued to a screen: some giggling at memes, others expressing shock and still others getting annoyed at the socially ubiquitous utterances of politicians.

But smartphones and social media are not the only forces hastening the decline of the popular novel. Publishers, understandably, have focused on producing textbooks to support curriculum implementation. While they occasionally publish novels, novellas or short-story collections, such works are often tailored to satisfy church-inspired moral standards and the requirements of textbook evaluation panels at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development.

To be clear, I am not advocating for Jackie Collins-style novels, known for their explicit sex, celebrity excess and scandal, to be included in the Orange Book of approved school texts. Rather, I argue that the drive to align fiction with educational objectives has stifled the local publication of works like Nairobi Noir, a collection of contemporary stories edited by Peter Kimani and published by Akashic Books as part of its global Noir Series.

Beyond the pressures of publishing schedules, the marketing and distribution channels for such books are also fading. In the 1980s, a publisher would often release only one major novel at a time. The book would receive extensive reviews in newspapers and magazines, building anticipation among readers and booksellers alike. Today, with the growth of publishing houses and advances in technology, books are produced in far greater numbers, making it difficult to identify what is new and worth reading.

The traditional bookshop model has also come under strain. Since the government began purchasing and distributing school books directly, many bookshops have shifted their focus to titles prescribed by nearby private schools. As a result, they rarely stock books beyond those lists.

In such an environment, even quality books aimed at the general market struggle to gain traction. Booksellers remain focused on the school market, while many potential readers are more attracted to phone screens than printed pages.

As a result, readers seeking books beyond the school curriculum increasingly turn to street vendors and online sellers for classics, imported titles and locally published works that have little or nothing to do with education.

All is not lost, though. A new type of bookshop is emerging, one that serves the general reader through active promotion by booksellers, publishers and authors. It is exemplified by Nuria Books, Prestige Bookshop and a handful of independent sellers who still champion novels that authentically capture the spirit of our times and the realities of everyday life.

Encouragingly, the quality of many contemporary novels is far superior to an era when books set in Nairobi and other African cities were routinely packaged with clichéd images of tribal masks, starving children, solitary acacia trees and other tired stereotypes of Africa.

Thanks to forward-thinking publishers and designers, book covers have become more sophisticated, featuring abstract art and contemporary urban imagery. Some evoke the world of tech millionaires sipping macchiatos in penthouses overlooking Kilimani’s increasingly scam-ridden streets or the corporate towers of Upper Hill. Others capture the modern African city in all its contradictions, ambitions and excesses.

Perhaps that is where the opportunity lies. Readers may no longer queue outside bookshops, but the stories remain. The challenge is finding new ways to place them in the hands of readers seeking narratives that reflect the realities of their lives.