For more than fifty years, Mau Mau has continuously provoked and inspired scholars to original work. In recent years, books by David Anderson, E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, and Caroline Elkins have shown that there is still considerable life left in the topic. The latest book to form part of this most recent revisionist wave is S. M. Shamsul Alam's Rethinking the Mau Mau in Colonial Kenya, which brings a different and novel approach to the subject.

Alam – an associate professor of sociology at Southern Oregon University – states that his aim in Rethinking the Mau Mau is not to ‘put the movement in its broad historical context’, but rather to ‘“read” the Mau Mau “event” from a postcolonial analytical perspective’ (p. ix). Alam is concerned with the nature of colonial power and the ability of those resisting it to ‘construct a counterhegemony’ (p. 2). Indeed, the influence of Gramsci and the Subaltern School looms large over the entire text. Rethinking the Mau Mau comprises nine chapters addressing different aspects of the conflict, from ‘Domination and resistance: writings on Mau Mau’ (Chapter 2), to ‘Women and Mau Mau’ (Chapter 4), to ‘Mau Mau and the critique of nationalism’ (Chapter 6). In an effort to link these somewhat disparate chapters, Alam states that they are woven together by the ‘theme of power and resistance against colonialism and an attempt to establish a free and just society in Kenya’ (p. ix), though this theme remains elusive in several of the chapters, resulting in a somewhat disjointed feel to the overall project.

Perhaps the most important contribution in this volume is Alam's analysis of Kenyan plays, novels, and songs. In ‘Rebel yell: the field marshal's story’ (Chapter 3), Alam analyzes the figure of Dedan Kimathi as expressed through these forms of media. He examines Kenneth Watene's play Dedan Kimathi, for instance, which portrays Kimathi in a negative light. Alam argues that Watene's play formed part of the discourse that was essential in building political alliances that excluded Mau Mau in newly independent Kenya. He continues his analysis of literature in ‘Writing as subversion: Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Mau Mau’ (Chapter 6). Through his analysis of Ngugi's literary corpus, Alam traces Ngugi's depiction of Mau Mau, demonstrating the way in which Ngugi used the episode to articulate resistance to colonial, neo-colonial, and post-colonial forms of power in Kenya. In Alam's words, ‘[Ngugi's] works speak eloquently and powerfully about the creation of national identities and the simultaneous construction of insurgent and subversive subjectivities’ (p.162).

Other chapters, unfortunately, do not offer such novel analysis. In ‘Women and Mau Mau’ (Chapter 4), Alam argues that women contributed to both the ‘passive’ and the ‘military wing’ of Mau Mau. Other authors such as Cora Ann Presley, Kathy Santilli, and Muthoni Likimani have proved this argument elsewhere. In any case, he provides little evidence in the chapter to demonstrate women's role in the actual fighting, basing his argument on one interview (the only one he appears to have carried out). Similarly, he spends time in Chapter 3 arguing that Ian Henderson's depiction of Kimathi was negative – rather an obvious point.

The organization of the book is also problematic. It ends up feeling rather ‘piecemeal’ – a series of somewhat unrelated essays forced together. Some chapters themselves can feel disjointed. In ‘Mau Mau in and as colonial discourse’ (Chapter 7), the author devotes one whole section to essentially arguing that Louis Leakey was not an unbiased participant in the government's war against Mau Mau (again, a point made elsewhere). He jams a brief ‘mini-history’ of early Kikuyu political activism into the middle of this section, before adding a biography of J. C. Carothers – without analysis – in the following section. The conclusion of the chapter is also somewhat unrelated to the chapter itself. The fact that Alam uses large theoretical introductions to his chapters – which are poorly tied to the subject matter of the chapters themselves – is also awkward.

The use of sources in the book is frequently insufficient or inappropriate. Although Alam states that he is unconcerned with the ‘broad historical context,’ to argue about the role of women in Mau Mau based on one interview – with minimal use of sources from the Kenya National Archives – is not enough, particularly considering that he spent the years 2000–02 as a Fulbright Senior Fellow in Kenya. In addition, constantly to address British colonial authority – and its methods and motivations – without using a single document from the National Archives in London or from Rhodes House in Oxford is mystifying. Colonial power simply appears as a homogenous block. These archival absences are even more surprising considering that Alam claims inspiration from Foucault and Guha in methods of ‘reading’ archives (p. 198).

One of the most significant problems with this book is its poor editing. The text is riddled with errors of spelling and grammar, which are found on almost every page. This severely hampers readability. Ngugi wa Thiong'o's name, for instance, appears as ‘Wa Thiong'o’, ‘wa Thiong'o’, ‘Wa thiong'o’, ‘Wa Thiong'o'o’, ‘wa Thiong’', and ‘wa Thiog'o’, in 17 pages of Chapter 6 (pp. 140–57). Carl Rosberg appears as ‘Roseberg’ and ‘Rosenberg’, and authors such as Robert Ruark [Richard], Elspeth Huxley [E. Harley], and David Maughan-Brown [Manghan-Brown] are a small selection of those whose names are misspelled.

Other troubling aspects of this project include the fact that Alam seems to assume without question a synergy between subaltern consciousness and resistance; also, he does not address the vast literature on resistance in the field of African Studies, nor that concerning the nature of the colonial state. In addition, given the centrality of memory to his entire project, his failure to reference the available literature on memory and Mau Mau – or memory and colonialism more widely – is problematic. Though this book has some merit in its analysis of Kenyan plays and novels, it unfortunately adds little that is new in the field of Mau Mau studies.