Jeff Koinange provides a powerful narrative as a scribe in his memoirs

Some books are simply page-turners. Such is star journalist Jeff Koinange’s Through My African Eyes. Let’s state the bottom line upfront. No African journalist before Mr Koinange had been so internationally famous. Nor are we likely to see the likes of him any time soon. Mr Koinange is a Kenyan original, one of a very rare species. Even in the pantheon of star journalists worldwide, Mr Koinange stacks up very favourably. I bet he would’ve become even more famous than CNN’s Anderson Cooper had the news giant not prematurely — and mysteriously — let him go. Still, Mr Koinange has remained an iconic newsman with a unique professional flamboyance. My crystal ball tells me his best days are yet to come.

Through My Africans Eyes isn’t, strictly speaking, an autobiography. It’s more a memoir, a narrowly focused category of the larger genre of autobiography. An autobiography is the “story of one’s life,” written by that author. A memoir, on the other hand, is the “story from a life,” also written by the author in the first-person.