A review of 'The Men Do Not Eat Wings' by S.W. Omamo

The world of men is a world of biologically inherited privilege. The quality of men's lives often turns on how they balance that privilege with the responsibility it determines and reflects. For many men, the balancing act leads to false pride, cruel dominance, violence, and corruption. For many others, it leads to narrow lives of limited ambition trodden on seemingly predetermined paths marked by regret over dreams and hopes set aside. But for some men, the balancing act yields happiness and contentment in relationships built on equity and empathy. S. W. Omamo's new novel, The Men Do Not Eat Wings is set in that world, in Kenya. This richly peopled book is full of surprises. The style is unusual. Omamo chooses a nonlinear format that covers three centuries and two continents. It is a risky approach that is at times bewildering as the plot dances quickly across time and space. But the storytelling is good enough to keep the pages turning toward a wonderfully graceful ending. Omamo gives words and agency to forgotten people - people whose lives, as he says at the beginning of the book, "…come and go without being told, without being recorded." The Men Do Not Eat Wings is a very fine book - one that announces Omamo as a major new voice in African literature. Rarely is a first novel written with such assurance and skill. This is an author to watch. The Men Do Not Eat Wings, a novel by S. W. Omamo (Richardson-Omamo Books, Kampala, Uganda, 2004). By Josiah Turubesa