Amapiano Eyes by D. Nandi Odhiambo

Reviewed by Dawn Macdonald

If Chester Himes and Martin Heidegger were the same person (much to the consternation of both, no doubt) they might have written a book like Amapiano Eyes. Here we find all the drug-fueled assault and murder of a classic noir novel fused with remarks about “the long-while in the short-while,” “beings and things gathered together in a given that was unfolding,” and “the present moment bracketed by what had already been installed (there and here).”

D. Nandi Odhiambo’s prose shifts wildly between registers, from hard-boiled to philosophical metanarrative, sometimes so abruptly that the reader might well wonder if the author is really serious about this, or is just messing with your head. Amapiano as a musical genre pulls off a similar set of tricks. It’s a dance-oriented style derived from house that builds on a relaxed groove almost suspended in time; a set of looping beats upon which to float a whole range of intersecting polyrhythms. Vocalists often blend English with Swahili, Xhosa and other languages of the African continent. Amapiano has room for performers with implausibly odd vocal qualities (Goya Menor, anyone?) and makes use of a panoply of sonic effects. Electronic sounds pop alongside log drums and other traditional forms of instrumentation. I’m no musical expert, but in listening I sometimes could swear I’m hearing multiple time signatures happening on top of each other. In Odhiambo’s rendering, the concept of “amapiano eyes” suggests a way of seeing through different textures of time and simultaneity.

Daliso, the central character of Odhiambo’s novel, is Kenyan by birth, living in Hawai’i, having spent part of his youth in Winnipeg where he developed an enduring obsession with philosophy in general and questions of ontology in particular. At the point where we meet him, he’s nominally a DJ, but the money is really coming from moving pharmaceuticals in partnership with his girlfriend Norrie. Both Daliso and Norrie have a shockingly high comfort level with initiating violent altercations, but Norrie is especially hair-trigger. The main action takes place between 2020 and 2023, with the pandemic ongoing inasmuch as characters sometimes wear medical masks or vanish into quarantine, but at a point where we’re well into “the new normal” and things like this had stopped being especially noteworthy. Nightclubs and restaurants re-open; people are generally willing to congregate and looking to party. At the same moment, life is lived increasingly online, with all the elements of spectacle and mesmerism that implies.

Unusually for a noir, we’re given glimpses of the protagonist as a mildly annoying teenager. “Amapiano eyes” can see through time, and we do, with sections of the book being set in 1999 and as far back as the 1930s (where we’re made privy to a deeply disturbing episode from Daliso’s family history). There’s a nod to the Winnipeg music scene here; Daliso and his sisters had first come to the Manitoba capital hoping to make it big with a little help from their uncle, a former one-hit wonder who still boasts of his “industry connections.” It’s here that Daliso first meets Norrie, a world-weary adolescent who’s already heading well off the rails.

The story is multi-layered and compelling, and is constructed in such a way as to deny the reader ease. Much of the dialogue feels stylized, even wooden, with many exchanges boiling down to various ways of saying, “Fuck.”—“Da fuck?” prior to someone getting their head stomped on. This may be intentional, part of the noir conceit. Characters frequently code-switch between dialects, sometimes within the same conversation, suggesting a level of performativity even among intimates. Odhiambo also indulges in the 90s PoMo move of heavily footnoting his narrative text. These notes range from the necessary and helpful, such as translations for Swahili phrases, to the jarring and intrusive. For example, as our protagonists travel toward a violent showdown, they pass by a public fountain; a footnote provides us with a potted history of this object such as one might encounter in a tourist’s guidebook. The effect is to remind us that we are indeed voyeurs, tourists in this story; to focus an unsettling spotlight on our positionality as spectators. (And I should say I’m absolutely a fan of 90s post-modernism. I like when this is done well, as it very much is here.)

Daliso and Norrie are clearly caught up in currents beyond their control, and in particular are enmeshed in familial and colonial histories that continue to play out genetically, emotionally and through webs of obligation. The past holds the present in its grip.

Amapiano Eyes is intellectually and viscerally challenging, packing a lot into a relatively slim volume of just over 200 pages. It’s an exciting mélange of genre, tone, dialect, and style; deeply conceptual, oddly moving, and absolutely original. It certainly will not be for everyone, and for that very reason, has all the makings of a literary cult classic.

About the Author

D. NANDI ODHIAMBO is the author of four previous critically acclaimed novels, including Smells Like Stars. His recent work, The Minoritarian and Black Reason: A Philosophico-Literary Investigation, explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, and race. A recipient of the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Odhiambo is a Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu. He lives on O‘ahu with his wife, Carmen, and their two dogs.

About the Reviewer

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she grew up without electricity or running water. She won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize for her poetry collection Northerny. She posts weekly on Reviews of Books I Got for Free or Cheap (on Substack), as well as reviews for journals and The Seaboard Review of Books.

Book Details

• Book*Hug Press March 24, 2026

• 5.25 x 8 inches

• 210 pages

• Trade Paperback

• ISBN 9781771669702