Facing Mount Kenya

'Facing Mount Kenya' is a central document of the highest distinction in anthropological literature, an invaluable key to the structure of African society and the nature of the African mind. 'Facing Mount Kenya' is not only a formal study of life and death, work and play, sex and the family in one of the greatest tribes of contemporary Africa, but a work of considerable literary merit. The very sight and sound of Kikuyu tribal life presented here are at once comprehensive and intimate, and as precise as they are compassionate.

Jomo Kenyatta, the grandson of a Kikuyu medicine man, was among the foremost leaders of African nationalism. In the 1930s he studied at the London School of Economics and took his degree in anthropology under Bronislav Malinowski.