Kirinyaga - Audiobook Digital Download
Janis' first audio book project after her Grammy nominated Patience and Sarah is, yet again, one-of-a-kind.
Listen to samples from this audio book!
Sample 1 | Sample 2 | Sample 3 | Sample 4
9 CDs, 10 hours 51 minutes of listening. (These are mp3s, not CDs.)
Says Janis: When I first read Mike Resnick's short story 'For I Have Touched the Sky', which became part of this collection, it blew me away. It touched me as a woman, as an artist, as a member of a society that often refused to understand my own thirst for knowledge. It's how Mike and I originally connected, when I sent him a fan letter about the book.
Years later, Mike and I were sitting around at a science fiction convention, and I started telling him again how strongly I felt about Kirinyaga, how much I wished I'd been the one to narrate it. And Mike looked at me and said, 'Why don't you?'
My immediate response was 'Because it's told in the first person by a male Kenyan shaman, and I am a white female from New Jersey.' But the more we talked about it, the more excited we both got at the thought of giving the audio book a second life. And now, with the success of Hamilton and other art works crossing race and gender, Mike's original enthusiasm and go-ahead seem almost prescient to me. Koriba's love of his lineage, his country, the respect he has for every aspect of his culture, are incredibly moving. Whether you agree with them or not, they spring from a place of truth within him.
From Amazon.com: Hailed for his grandeur of imagination and superb worldbuilding, winner of and nominee for more than 50 awards for his outstanding work, Mike Resnick has rightfully won a place as one of science fiction's master storytellers. Now, in Kirinyaga, Resnick presents the haunting and utterly compelling tale of one man's utopia. By the 22nd century in the African nation of Kenya, polluted cities sprawl up the flanks of sacred Mount Kirinyaga. Great animal herds are but distant memories. European crops now grow on the sweeping savannas. But Koriba, a distinguished, educated man of Kikuyu ancestry, knows that life was different for his people centuries ago - and he is determined to build a utopian colony, not on Earth, but on the terraformed planetoid he proudly names Kirinyaga. As the mundumugu - witch doctor - Koriba leads the colonists. Reinstating the ancient customs and stringent laws of the Kikuyu people, he alone decides their fate. He must face many challenges to the struggling colony's survival: from a brilliant young girl whose radiant intellect could threaten their traditional ways, to the interference of "Maintenance", which holds the power to revoke the colony's charter. All the while, only Koriba - unbeknownst to his people - maintains the computer link to the rest of humanity. Ironically, the Kirinyaga experiment threatens to collapse - not from violence or greed - but from humankind's insatiable desire for knowledge. The Kikuyu people can no more stand still in time than their planet can stop revolving around its sun. Deeply moving, swiftly paced, and profound in its implications.
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Also available in print from your local independent bookstore!!!
