WHEN THE WHIRLWIND PASSES and KISS, COMMANDER, PROMISE are the first audiobooks by Alexander Nderitu published with LA CASE Books.

The Californian digital Publisher LA CASE Books presents a new collaboration with Kenyan writer Alexander Nderitu. The audiobooks WHEN THE WHIRLWIND PASSES and KISS, COMMANDER, PROMISE are now available in 66 countries on Google Play Store.

‘As an innovator and promoter of literature in Africa, I am excited to partner with LA CASE Books in this venture’ says Alexander Nderitu. ‘Two of my books, WHEN THE WHIRLWIND PASSES and KISS, COMMANDER, PROMISE are made available in audio book format exclusively via LA CASE Books.  I have been curious about audiobooks for a while and have written about them in at least two papers: Changing Kenya’s Literary Landscape and, more recently, Changing the Literary Map of Africa. Electronic technology has revolutionized every aspect of the book trade, and audiobooks are but one product of the revolution. Audiobooks and literary podcasts have been gaining ground in Africa for the last few years and I’m certain the trend will continue into the future. One of the biggest selling points of audio books is that they allow one to absorb the contents of a literary work hands-free. Thus a person could be doing dishes, driving a car, or working in an office environment while following a narrative or, as in the case of non-fiction books, learning something.  Telling an author, “I’ve listened to your books” will soon be as normal as saying, “I’ve read your books”. Just like it’s now as normal for book buyers to ask us for “selfies” as for autographs. These are exciting times for literature indeed!’

The joint venture between LA CASE Books and Alexander Nderitu is a very innovative project: both audiobooks are auto-narrated by Maxwell and Mike, a voices by Google AI. Auto-narrated audiobooks use Artificial Intelligence and text-to-speech technology to create audio from a book or an e-Book. These audiobooks use AI voice to read ebooks.

‘We are very excited for this new collaboration’ says Giacomo Brunoro, LA CASE Books editor in chief. ‘I met Alex in Nairobi in 2017 and I love his books and his style of writing. We need new voices, voices like Alex: African literature is very underrated and the audiobooks now are the better way to talk with the world. We look at African literature with enormous interest and we work to publish new titles and even new African authors in the next months. In 2018 LA CASE Books has already published the e-Book THE CRESCENT MOON by Vera Omwocha, a young Kenyan writer, that is now also available in audiobook format’.

The Author

Alexander Nderitu is a Kenyan poet, novelist, playwright and critic. In 2001, he published his first novel online. It is regarded as Africa’s first purely ‘digital novel’. He has since published three more books: ‘The Moon is Made of Green Cheese’ (2008), ‘Kiss Commander Promise’ (2021), and ‘The Talking of Trees’ (2021).

Nderitu’s short stories, articles and poems have been published in The East African Standard, Publishing Perspectives, Hjänstorm, Ars Artium, IFLAC Peace and Anti-Terror Anthology, Commonwealth Poetry Postcards, My Africa, My City: An Afridiaspora Anthology, AwaaZ, World Poetry Almanac, One Million Project: Thriller Anthology, AfricanWriter.com, Agbowó, SETU and IHRAF Publishes, among other journals and publications.

Some of his writings have been translated into Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Swedish, French, Dholuo, and Kiswahili. His more scholarly work (including research papers on African literature and theatre) is available on Academia.edu. In 2014, his narrative poem ‘Someone in Africa Loves You’ represented Kenyan literature on Commonwealth Postcards distributed during the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2017, Business Daily newspaper listed him amongst Kenya’s ‘Top 40 Under 40 Men’. In 2020, he was a finalist for the Collins Elesiro Literature Prize. In 2021, his play Freedom Corner was a co-winner of the IHRAF Africa Playwriting Competition.

Nderitu is currently the Deputy Secretary-General of Kenyan PEN and a Regional Managing Editor for the global theatre news portal, TheTheatreTimes.com. His official website is www.AlexanderNderitu.com