[Petals of Blood] announces its radical political intention in the author's choices of sectional epigraphs: from Walt Whitman, William Blake and Amilcar Cabral, among other poets. It's a willfully diagrammatic and didactic novel which also succeeds artistically because of its resonant characterization and deadly irony. It satisfies both the novelist's political intent and the obligation I know he feels toward his art….

[The novel shows] the workers at the overseas-owned Theng'eta Brewery in Ilmorog, a new town near the Trans-Africa Highway,… planning a militant strike, after the directors' meeting declared a no pay-raise decision; hours later three Theng'eta directors are found burnt to death; three townspeople are arrested….

It becomes clear that the excoriating conflict of interests in Ilmorog is a microcosm of the larger national one in Kenya. (p. 681)

The novel closes with the people of Ilmorog not just sensing a mere illusory feeling of having experienced...