Winner of the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. 

Desperate to make ends meet, Ombima commits a "harmless" crime. When he tries to conceal his misdeed, the simple farm laborer becomes a reluctant participant in a sinister affair. If discovered, the consequences could be disastrous for Ombima's family, friends, and a spate of unwitting, gossipy villagers. 

A delicious tale of greed, lust, and betrayal, Stanley Gazemba's Forbidden Fruit is more than a dramatic tale of rural life in Western Kenya. The moral slips and desperate cover - sometimes sad, sometimes farcical - are the stories of time and place beyond the village of Maragoli.   

"Once in a while I come across a novel that affirms life, without cheapening it, or sensationalizing, a book that presents a human condition with such mastery it makes one proud to be alive. They are, for me, the sort of books that make literature great." (Binyavanga Wainaina)

"What makes [Forbidden Fruit] so special is that it has no pretensions about attempting to address issues of modernity, of city life, of 'clash of cultures,' of the rural-urban divide...the issues it deals with are as immediate, even if they are beyond the gaze, beyond the limits of the urbanity that attracts most writers." (African Review of Books)