Cheche Bookshop and Cafe

10/08/2026

How do you capture the cadence of the Swahili coast when carrying a story back to its native tongue? 🌊📖

Join us on August 18th for an extraordinary evening as scholar and translator Dr. Ida Hadjivayanis takes the stage in conversation with acclaimed author Yvonne Adhiambo Awuor for Translating the Swahili Littoral: On Tides, Texts, and the Art of Swahili Return.

Language along the coast has always been fluid. It has been carried by monsoon winds, trade currents, and as always, memory. Through her landmark Swahili translations of Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novels Peponi (Paradise) and Dhulma (Theft), Dr. Ida takes on the vital task of literary repatriation. To bring stories profoundly shaped by the East African Swahili coast back into the language where they belong.

To explore what it means to write and translate the ocean, Dr. Ida is joined by Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Awuor whose sophomore novel The Dragonfly Sea maps these very same waters. It is a novel that posits the Swahili seas as a living realm of remembrance, belonging, and global connection.

Together, these two brilliant minds will dive into the craft of translation, coastal histories, and the vitality of Swahili literature across the Swahili seas.

Books will be available for purchase and signing. All are welcome! ✨️

09/08/2026

📢Join us on Sunday, 16th August as we host FreeQuency in celebration of their latest release (On |Un-)Becoming. FreeQuency will be joined in conversation by activist and poet Immah Reid + special guests!

(On |Un-)Becoming is a collection of stories, reflections, forgivenesses and offerings rooted in conversations and conflicts with FreeQuency's mother, chosen family & other selves. The anti disciplinary project liberates the concept of "transitioning" from the realm of Westernized notions of gender and expands|explores|explodes the concept of (un)becoming in relationship to international Blackness, migration|movement, geographic and corporeal displacement, spiritual|mental health and the ties between personal and communal transformation.

Books will be available for purchase and signing. All are welcome. Maskng is encouraged ✨️

30/07/2026

📢On Thursday August 5th, we are honoured to host the global launch of Sahra Noor's highly-anticipated memoir, Salt in the Snow. She will be in conversation with Nairobi-based writer + poet, Fatima Hagi.

Salt in the Snow takes readers from the sunlit courtyard of a family home in Mogadishu - through Baidoa, Nairobi, Mombasa - to the icy streets of Minneapolis. It is a striking memoir about inevitable exile, motherhood, and the complex, enduring influence of a father's love.

Raised in a close-knit, multigenerational Somali household, Sahra is shaped early by tradition and the towering presence of her father, Noor, who has to take ahold of the family ever more fiercely when her mother passes on. His values become the compass by which she navigates the world—until arriving in the United States as a teenager and everything shifts.

As Sahra builds a life in America on her own terms, she examines how her father’s expectations both shape and confine her, and how their bond supersedes every transition. Told with fierce honesty, emotional clarity, and unrelenting resilience, Salt in the Snow is a memoir for anyone who has ever straddled two cultures, two generations, or two selves in search of belonging in the in-between.

Date: Thursday 13th August
Time: 6:00 PM EAT
Venue: Cheche Books, Kauria Close, Off Muthangari Rd, Lavington

**Salt in the Snow is published by Catalyst Press and is officially out on August 4th. Secure your copy now by clicking the preorder link in our bio. Preorder copies will be available for pick up at Cheche from August 4th.

28/07/2026

📢Join us next Thursday, August 6th, from 6PM as we host an evening of critical thought and as always, radical politics.

We welcome Dr. Brian Kwoba in conversation with writer, lawyer Njahira Gitahi to discuss his award-winning biography, Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism.

Hailed as the "father of Harlem radicalism", Hubert Henry Harrison (1883–1927) was a towering yet deliberately erased titan of Black intellectual history, socialist organizing, freethought, and internationalism. Dr. Kwoba’s brilliant work restores Harrison's revolutionary legacy to its rightful place, unpacking how his visionary solutions to systemic injustices continue to resonate today.

📍 Cheche Books, Kauria Close, Off Muthangari Rd, Lavington
📅 Thursday, August 6th
⏰ 6PM

All are welcome ✨️

28/04/2026

Poetic Ruminations and Exchange
May 6th

1:30 PM — Poetry Workshop with award-winning poet Nick Makoha

Join award-winning poet and playwright Nick Makoha for an intimate writing session focused on developing your poetry in a supportive, thoughtful space.
Open to poets at all stages.

Register via the link in bio.
Selected applicants will receive a confirmation email.

… and in the evening, from 6:00 PM

Join us for poetry readings, reflections, and conversation led by Nairobi-based writer + poet Abigail Arunga. We’ll gather around words, ideas, and reflections on Nick Makoha’s latest collection, The New Carthaginians, and more.

Free Entry!

18/04/2026

📢Join us this Friday for an evening of Congolese art, live music and food in benefit of the collaborative project Building a Pan-African Library

On Saturday evening, we will be screening the short MWAN'ENGO and the documentary film From Patrice to Lumumba followed by a panel discussion.

And of course book donations are still being accepted till the end of April. Let's build this library together.

All are welcome! ✨️

Artwork by

16/04/2026

📢Join us next Wednesday for the Nairobi launch of The Friendship Bench: How fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution. Visiting Zimbabwean psychiatrist and author Dixon Chibanda will be in conversation with the insightful Mshaï Mwangola.

This book is a primer on how human connection forms the bedrock of our resilience. It gives readers the tools to facilitate transformative healing by reaching out to those who are struggling and isolated from the world around them. In a world where su***de is now a leading cause of death amongst young people, the book is a case study of how interventions supported by robust scientific evidence rooted in African cultural values can be scaled using community elders. Ultimately, it’s a celebration of the collective wisdom and knowledge of those rooted in their communities and their profound ability to foster belonging, purpose, and healing.

Books will be available for purchase and signing. All are welcome! ✨️

10/04/2026

25/03/2026

📢Join us this Sunday afternoon as we delve into March book, the Maya Angelou classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. If you haven't started yet, there's still time, get your copy at Cheche or read it in the space this week. Follow for all things Noname Book Club Nairobi chapter.

All are welcome! ✨️

🗓 Sunday March 29th
🕐 3PM
📍 Cheche Books