Nairobi — When Binyavanga Wainaina happened on the local literary scene a few years ago, he found it in limbo. Taban lo Liyong's curse that East Africa was a literary wasteland had made Kenya its home.

But the young man, fresh from bagging the 2002 edition of the Caine Prize for Africa Writing, oozed enthusiasm, and caused quite a ripple with his announcement that he wanted to re-draw the contours of the local literary landscape, and that his main project would be to give a platform of expression to those who had been shunned by the mainstream media.

To him, the older generation of Kenyan writers had stifled the growth of local talent by not allowing new voices to flourish. This take on issues, understandably, earned him a lovely number of enemies -- especially the old guard -- who felt the lad had become too full of himself and disrespectful of the established order.

But the sonny boy wasn't bluffing, and ploughed his Sh1 million prize money into the establishment of an outfit that had the wags over the roof, Kwani? (Kiswahili for 'So What?').

He was not done yet. In 2003, he released the first edition of Kwani? the magazine, which immediately attracted the wrath of literary purists for its dalliance with the ghetto (Binyavanga had dared publish stories in Sheng, the bastard language of the 'trenches').

As they are wont to, newspaper columnists loved the new rebel in town, and gave him acres upon acres of free publicity.

The Ford Foundation noted the hooplah and sent someone on look-see mission at Kwani? The result was loads and loads of dough to the project, which then introduced an open mic poetry concept, where poets would take to the stage once every month and showcase their creativity to the world.

A year later, Yvonne Awuor, another Kenyan (who, by the way, had gone through the Kwani? ranks), took the Caine prize with her short story, Weight of Whispers. The feat silenced the critics, but not completely.

Another product of the revolution was Muthoni Garland, who quit her high-profile career as a marketer to take up literature. This year, through her Storymoja outfit, she organised the Hay Festival, one of the largest and most prestigious literary festivals in the world.

The successes of these initiatives put Binyavanga on a pedestal, and today he is known the world over for his contribution to literature. Apart from lecturing around the globe, he has a column in the respected Guardian newspaper in the UK.

However, his would have been an all-round success story were it not for one nagging aspect. In spite of his immense contribution to world literature, seven years after he won his award, literary enthusiasts are yet to read his first book.

And, if we were to judge him by the standards of other Caine Prize winners, our man is not doing so well. Chimamanda Adichie, who was a nominee for the Caine Prize Binyavanga won in 2002, has given the world two wonderful books, Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, the latter which won the 2007 Orange Prize, and was included in Time magazine's 100 Books of the Decade. Brian Chikwava, the 2004 Caine Prize winner, released Harare North this year to critical acclaim.