Perspectives on law and justice depicted in Muroki Ndung’u’s A Friend of the Court (1994)

Abstract

One of the subjects of literary fiction is the law. Outside the world of fiction, law occupies a grand position and justice is underpinned by a legal process. This study sought to determine the different perspectives on Kenyan law depicted in Muroki Ndung’u’s novel A Friend of the Court. The research was guided by postmodernist literary theory, particularly Lyotard’s contestations on grand narratives, Derrida’s binary oppositions, contradictions in language use as founded in Saussurean philosophy and fiction as representation of the unconscious. Content analysis was used, relying on a close reading of the selected novel to collect primary data. Secondary data was obtained from a review of published works on law and literature, including Kenyan daily newspapers, which helped to contextualize issues in the study. In his novel, Muroki Ndung’u shows how in Kenya there is tension between politics and the law. Although law is a product of political processes, namely public debate and consensus, the processes of drafting, amendment and promulgation, implementation and enforcement of the constitution is rife with political overtones. For this reason, Ndung’u lampoons the chaotic nature of Kenya’s judicial processes in his work. The fact that his novel is politico-legal in itself is symbolic of the confusion between law and politics in the Kenya he represents in the novel. The study contributes to the body of knowledge on the relationship between literature and the law and the contest between grand and marginalised narratives.