This book is essentially a fable, beginning in the vague mists of time with the Kikuyu creation myth and progressing through the formation and eventual collapse of its resulting society. Many of its elements resonate in creation myths worldwide. Gikuyu and Mumbi serve in very much the same capacity as do Adam and Eve.

The symbolic warrior, manifested as Macharia, becomes an inquiring spirit. What he is going to learn is that he must look on himself as a man of the world, not as someone who is always looking back to his origins in the primeval cave. He turns into a man, which means that he...