Truth Is a Flightless Bird

Hussain’s earnest debut dramatizes the fraught social and economic circumstances of modern-day East Africa. Pregnant and scared, Theresa (who goes by Nice), a Canadian U.N. worker in Somalia, travels to Nairobi, Kenya, ostensibly to get an abortion, but her real goal is to escape her controlling, drug dealer boyfriend, Toogood. Tasked with transporting a quarter kilo of Toogood’s “bespoke narcotics” and burdened with her secret life, Nice has arranged to meet her college friend, Duncan, an American pastor working at the Westlands Church of the Earth in Kenya, in hopes that he can help her disappear and start a new life with her baby. Soon after Duncan picks up Nice from the Nairobi airport, the pair are ambushed and held by a self-proclaimed healer, Ciru, who attempts to take a cut ofToogood’s Kenyan business prospects. After this arresting setup, however, extended backstories and overwrought explanations slow the narrative. President Obama’s visit to Kenya acts as a backdrop to the novel’s events, but Nice’s personal situation and the social implications of this historic visit fail to coalesce. That said, Hussain displays enough stylistic flair to suggest he’ll do better next time. (Nov.)