News in brief

A matatu in Mombasa on April 14, 2014.

What you need to know:

  • Writers from different African countries will at 3 p.m. on Sunday meet at the Kwani Trust office garden for a special edition of the monthly Sunday Salon
  • Indian-British novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie has won the 2014 PEN Pinter Prize

‘Matatu Games’ on until July 2

Kuona Trust in Nairobi is hosting an exhibition by artist Dennis Muraguri. The display, “Matatu Games”, opened on June 18. It is part of the ongoing Matatu project that centres on the urban culture of public service vehicles.

The first phase of this showcase was an art project in Nairobi streets earlier this year. “Matatu Games” presents street art as a significant art form that is as valuable and powerful as any other.

Muraguri uses different media to showcase this unique sub-culture whose influence on society is irrefutable. “Matatu Games” closes on July 2.

Kwani hosts monthly Sunday Salon

Writers from different African countries will at 3 p.m. on Sunday meet at the Kwani Trust office garden for a special edition of the monthly Sunday Salon. Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo, Nigerian Yewande Omotoso, Ugandan Jennifer Makumbi, and Kenyans Billy Kahora and Okwiri Oduor will grace the event where they will read from their works. The public is invited for the function.

Novelist Rushdie wins Pinter Prize

Indian-British novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie has won the 2014 PEN Pinter Prize. The 1981 recipient of the Man Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children will be presented with the award at a British library on October 9.

In a statement, Rushdie said: “It’s very moving to receive an award named after my friend Harold Pinter, whose literary genius was only matched by his passion for social justice”.

He stated that both PEN, a worldwide association of writers, and Pinter had been active in his defence when he needed it.

The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 by the campaigning group English PEN in memory of the Nobel Prize-winning English playwright Harold Pinter. It is given annually to a writer who, in the words of Pinter, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze on the world and shows a “fierce intellectual determination... to define the real truth of our lives and societies”.