Germans on the Kenyan Coast: Land, Charity, and Romance

Nina Berman's Germans on the Kenyan Coast: Land, Charity, and Romance is a thoughtful effort to draw connections between the ever-vexed land question in the postcolonial world, the frequently oversimplified complexity of the history behind this, and the often-marginalized ways in which the personal has played as important a role as the political in externally-driven material development in Africa. As such, it is a welcome addition to an otherwise limited writing of its type.

Berman has done a wonderful job of providing a balance between detailing observations and personal stories from the ethnographic fieldwork and offering academic analyses. Thus, this is a suitable book for undergraduate and graduate level courses in tourism studies, social development, migration, urban development, humanitarian studies, and qualitative methods. Additionally, this book will no doubt contribute to a rethinking of the need to balance the power in the core-periphery relationships.

Nina Berman provides a nuanced, fresh, and contemplative interpretation of the colonial and post independence interaction between Kenya and Germany, shedding light on the romantic, psychosexual and psychosocial, and economic entanglements that tie German tourists to their Kenyan hosts on the Kenyan coast.

Nina Berman is Professor of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University Her most recent book publications include German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Practices, 1000-1989 and an edited anthology (with Klaus Muhlhahn and Patrice Nganang), German Colonialism Revisited: African, Asian, and Oceanic Experiences.