Meja Mwangi (born 27 December 1948, Nanyuki) is a leading Kenyan novelist of the post-colonial era. Educated at Nanyuki Secondary School, Kenyatta College, and briefly the University of Leeds, he broke out with Kill Me Quick (1973), followed by Carcase for Hounds (1974), Going Down River Road (1976), and The Cockroach Dance (1979), works praised for unsentimental portraits of urban Kenya. Kill Me Quick won the 1974 Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and cemented his status as a major East African voice. His honours include the Jomo Kenyatta Prize again in 2001 for The Last Plague, the Lotus Prize for Literature (1978), and children’s-literature recognition such as the ALA Notable Books list for The Mzungu Boy; he was also a Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa in 1975–76. Mwangi worked in film as a screenwriter and assistant director, with credits linked to Out of Africa (1985), White Mischief (1987), and—per biographical sources—Gorillas in the Mist (1988); Carcase for Hounds was adapted as Cry Freedom (1981) by Ola Balogun. His fiction remains widely taught and discussed for its clear-eyed social realism and Nairobi street-level focus.