Amapiano Eyes by D. Nandi Odhiambo

Accompanied by the deep beats of Amapiano music, D. Nandi Odhiambo’s gritty, high-stakes new novel Amapiano Eyes is a masterful blend of literary fiction and noir—an existential thriller where the past and present collide.

When the pandemic abruptly arrives, Daliso Okoth, a DJ and existential philosopher living in Waikiki, loses his job as a construction labourer. At a crossroads, he joins his girlfriend and fellow DJ, Norrie Vee, in her side hustle selling prescription and designer drugs on Oahu. After her business partner steals their stash, Norrie and Daliso are left in a lurch. With travel bans causing supply shortages on the island, they scramble to mitigate the damage by selling dope for a corrupt former detective.

Daliso struggles to stay afloat in a world that seems to be crumbling around him. While he contends with a deteriorating heart condition and worries about his aging parents and Norrie, Daliso is plagued with painful memories of his grandfather, who was an exhibit in a Human Zoo. Meanwhile, Norrie is facing her own crisis of her mother’s addiction to opiates. Ultimately, the couple must decide whether to continue down a path of violence to resolve the crisis or to choose kindness, as Daliso’s grandfather taught him.

Daliso’s charged present, set against the hyperreal beauty and poverty of Hawai’i, is shot through with the past: adolescent reckonings in Kenya and Winnipeg and dehumanizing ancestral legacies in Germany. For him, the present is not an effect of the past, but the past lives unsettled with the present.

Praise for Amapiano Eyes

“In Amapiano Eyes, D. Nandi Odhiambo navigates us from Waikiki to Winnipeg, from Nairobi to Hamburg. In a mesmerizing display of literary pyrotechnics, he captures the generational dreams, traumas, aspirations, and despairs of diasporic Africa as it ripples across continents. A metaphysical thriller, one part Heidegger, one part Tarantino, and another part Aime Cesaire, Amapiano Eyes will keep you on the edge of your seat. Get ready for a wild ride.” —Jonathan Garfinkel, author of In a Land Without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark

“I could call Amapiano Eyes wonderful and moving, but that would hardly capture this exhilarating convergence of philosophy and noir: shot through with humour, illuminated by shimmering prose, and deepened by a profound meditation on choice versus fate—on being. Unfolding across time and space—from Hawaiʻi to Winnipeg to Nairobi—Amapiano Eyes is a searing, unforgettable book.” —Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island

“Amapiano Eyes is as hybrid a creation as the South African musical genre that gives it its name, fusing a philosophical frame with a high-octane Bonnie and Clyde story that careens from Waikiki to Nairobi to Winnipeg. As always, Odhiambo’s keenly attuned love of language is a rush and a delight.” —Tom Gammarino, author of King of the Worlds