It Should Not Happen to a Boy

Book excerpt: This is a narrative of the author's childhood memories as he was growing up in a small village in Kenya. This was characterized by several events arranged here in short stores and told with the light touch. What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and enlighten. My narrative is not limited to just this end. I wish no one to read this book under misapprehension. The reader may gain a heightened awareness of culture with its norms, traditions, morals and social organization, albeit from a boy's perspective and from time to time, my current views of these. Readers are welcome to think that this book will let them make a better judgment of my culture and even appreciate it. I cannot with all honesty demand of this. I cannot even promise that readers will be able to do this by the end of the book. All I can suggest is that, when you tire of reading the Best 100 Books, you may take up this book for half an hour. It will do you much good.