In this often subversive book, Samson Kambalu introduces his country of birth, Malawi, an impoverished nation in which no dissent is tolerated, where political opponents are “disappeared” and where a portrait of Life President Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda is always guaranteed to be watching. Narrated with sass and charisma, The Jive Talker is a love letter to an Africa that is hardly understood.