Akbar Hussain’s Truth is A Flightless Bird is an exciting novel set in the frenetic African city of Nairobi. It's a place as unpredictable and memorable as the characters in the book, making it a unique debut.

Nice, a woman fleeing her Somali drug-dealing boyfriend, and the terrors she experienced while working for the UN in Mogadishu, turns to her friend Duncan for help. An American pastor in Nairobi, he is her only hope. Her abduction sparks a thrilling adventure set in a far-away land and filled with cultural exploration.

The African view...especially the Kenyan view...of Barack Obama's presidency wasn't like the US view in most particulars. Kenyans saw the son of one of their own people rise to the most powerful position in the world and felt slightly awed and overjoyed. (I don't need to discuss what happened here. You know.) It was a moment of real hope, much like the moment the war criminals in charge squandered when the World Trade Center was brought down.

When there aren't "legitimate" means to make a living, improve one's lot in life, people find other means to accomplish those eternally applicable goals. That the drug-smuggling world brings misery and poverty to millions, and millions to the very, very few, doesn't matter to those whose needs include enough food and a decent place to live. (Nor do these same concerns animate the decisions of the tens of thousands in this country who work for defense contractors, or chemical manufacturers.) Nice, as young Theresa is called, is a bored American girl whose needs are catered to by a drug-dealing Somali boyfriend...she's in Mogadishu on an international-aid financed jamboree...and she's cajoled into becoming a drug mule. Fly from Mogadishu to Nairobi, deliver the goods, come back and all will be well.

All is not well.

Nice is kidnapped by people who would prefer their own profits get fattened by the cargo inside Nice. Duncan, her fellow American and a truly clueless White Savior spreadin' the Gospel to people he begins to realize need something to explain the randomness of the Universe and he's there, so he'll do. It's a sobering moment, facing up the fact you're really not qualified to speak for God. Especially when that's the path you've chosen to tread.

When it comes to the Kenyans who set the plot's stressful parts in motion, they're all driven by Big Needs. You know, Revenge and Power and stuff like that. Nothing important...no one here's hurtin' for their next meal. What I got most clearly when I read this uniquely sourced thriller was that there's really no one in it who has one single solitary excuse for what they're doing to make others miserable. Lots of reasons! Not one excuse.

The other thing I learned is that it's hugely dangerous to imagine you're in any way immune from the consequences of your actions. Long may it be so, only a little more equitably distributed and on a thriller novel's time scale. Every one of these souls is screwed over, screwed up, and just plain screwed when the story ends. I wonder if any of them learned anything...I wonder what they dream about when they think of their time in Nairobi. I suspect a lot of "what might have been"s are thought.

None of the characters have great depths that get plumbed but this is a thriller so why would they? What we're offered instead is telling moments...a man thinks of his worthlessness while looking at a grieving father's earlobes in the strong sunshine through a window, a woman picking up an airplane-food omelette whole and shoving it into her mouth...that concisely delineate the characters' inner states. The quietness of it could be read as an absence of effort on the author's part. I say it is, rather, a subtle and really quite uncharitable summing-up of the people in question.

These aren't the details a writer of schlock calls to your attention. They're subtle selections presented at an oblique angle. They are the epitome of show me, don't just tell me. To be sure, there are moments of telling me what might profitably been shown:
To this revelation, which crystallized so much of Duncan's recent experience, Edmund delivered that devastating dialectical upper cut. With a curl of his lip, he asked, "So what?"

Duncan was too stunned and stoned to formulate a sentence.

Too bald. Too prescriptive...I can only be allowed one response to someone who has curled a lip...and not in keeping with the best moments of storytelling in here.

I'll still recommend to y'all that this book join your library. I think what it offers is what the best kinds of thrillers offer: A window into the worst moments of an unremarkably decent person's life. A view into a world not quite as you thought it was, or should be; that no one thinks is as good as it could be. And the bonus is that you're in competent hands guided by eyes and ears that have been where they're telling you about often enough and long enough to command your belief. There's the indefinable air of a person with local knowledge imparting it to you.

Go on the trip, give your thriller-eater the trip, or best of all do both.

With its intriguing title, Truth is a Flightless Bird by Akbar Hussain is a debut literary fiction novel. It is set in Nairobi just prior to an imminent American Presidential visit by Barack Obama. A female United Nations worker returning from Mogadishu named Nice, is carrying drugs in her stomach and comes under the attention of Hinga, a corrupt immigration police officer. Duncan, an American pastor and friend, picks up Nice at the airport, but their car is forced off the road and Nice is abducted. Duncan awakens to discover he is a captive of Hinga and enlists the help of Ciru, a ruthless woman able to navigate the city’s dark underbelly. In the final chapter as the climax occurs, the radio plays Presidential Obama’s speech as a juxtaposition of the unfolding events. Its easy-flowing narrative captures the ambiance of Nairobi and its machinations played out in this enjoyable tale with a three star rating. My thanks to Iskanchi Press and the author, for an uncorrected advanced reader copy for review purposes. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given.

Enjoyable book! Rate 3.75
US President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit and Nairobi is abuzz. But the real story for us is related via several characters: Nice, Duncan, Ciru, and Toogood. All of them in difficult circumstances, all of them connected in some way to the illegal drug trade.

With their stories, comes the story of two cities, and much about the culture within. You are transplanted to the unsavoury parts of the drug world, good and bad. Much like the characters, also not all bad and not all good.

Review at Murder in Common:
https://murderincommon.com/2022/10/30/iskanchi-books-believers-and-hustlers-and-truth-is-a-flightless-bird/

Truth is a flightless bird
An interesting premise, which I felt didn't live up to its potential. The characters I felt lacked depth, I didn't quite understand the motivation for the lead female character to act as a drug mule. Additionally the characters felt a bit of a cliche, that is, a corrupt policeman, a local herbalist/witchdoctor, and a white missionary. As a reader I had little to no empathy or investment in the main characters, they were not particularly likeable, this goes back to my point that the characters lacked depth, and as a reader I felt I did not understand their motivations for their actions and hence this impacted on the plot. In particular the depiction of Ciru as a witchdoctor I felt uncomfortable with, I felt she could have been a scammer without having the witchdoctor element. Overall I felt that there was something missing from this book.

Thrillers are not usually my jam, but after reading Truth is a Flightless Bird I wonder if they should be! This novel was a breathless rush from beginning to end. I can see how this would make a fantastic television series and I am looking forward to seeing the unravelling around Duncan, Ciru, and Nice on the screen. I even want to see Toogood -- which is a commendation to Hussain's skill at writing terrific flawed villains.

The novel is explosive from the get-go. Nice is a drug mule flying from Mogadishu (Somalia) to Nairobi (Kenya) and Duncan, her friend and a pastor, is unwittingly dragged into the mess that she has made of this illicit mission. The story revolves around Duncan's nightmare as drug dealers, corrupt officials, petty thieves, and others attempt to take advantage of Nice and the dangerous situation which naturally results from ingesting and walking around with drugs in your body. Ciru is one of those individuals who attempts to use Nice and the drugs to further her own agenda. She is a witch doctor, a con-woman, a mother who has lost her wayward child due to the machinations of others further up in the drug-smuggling world. Toogood is a Somalian gangster, also trapped in this convoluted drug-criminal world trying to make amends for a past he had little control over. Then there is Edmund, a young man deported from the United States, and Hinga, a corrupt police officer, and a crew of other characters who each come into the tale with their own ambitions.

As a thriller, there isn't much interiority to these characters, but the reader will discover that no one is who they seem to be on the surface. The truth matters very little in this underbelly world; what matters is using what you have to get what you need or what you want. I don't usually try to read too much into thrillers; but, it is here -- in this discussion of the utility of truth -- that Hussain's title has to give the reader pause to reflect. There is something being said here about the futility of struggling against tides that are out of our control. Truth is one of those obstacles, or at least, the idea that there is a single Truth, capital T. All the characters of this novel, Duncan, Nice, Ciru, and Toogood, have found themselves in situations less than ideal, despite their best efforts. The truth, their truth, does not matter to the forces and people who hold the reins of their lives. It should not even matter to themselves; to survive Nairobi they've got to let go of the idea that there is only one truth, one version of events, one version of a person. They have to let go of an idea of themselves that either doesn't really exist or will drag them down. In a way, their blind pursuit of truth stifles them, prevents them from taking flight -- being free.

The novel also makes a subtle comment on the corruptibility of the human soul -- and the possibility of redemption. As events unfold, it becomes clear that the characters are more than what they appear. They are flawed, corrupted, but that doesn't mean they are wholly bad people. The bad decisions they've made in their lives should not define them, but inevitably do. The novel is about their attempts to right their wrongs. Some of them succeed, some of them fail -- and spectacularly. Entwined in a drug-smuggling mess the characters find that one error leads to another one, deeper and darker and more dangerous than the last.

Plot and characters aside, Truth is a Flightless Bird is a fantastic novel of place. It gives the reader a view into a world most of us will never get to see or experience in person: the seedy underworld of Nairobi and Mogadishu. I don't doubt these worlds really exist. Every city in the world has its unsavory parts, its criminal societies, and there are good people everywhere who are drowned in it. People like Nice and Duncan and Ciru. Even Hinga and Toogood. The interactions of the