Kipligat's Chance: A Novel

By D. Nandi Odhiambo

John "Leeds" Kipligat is a 17-year-old Kenyan emigre living with his parents in a bleak Vancouver housing project. At the urging of his best friend, a fellow Kenyan named Kulvinder Sharma, he tries out for a local track club. Their goal: to run fast enough to get scholarships to American universities, and escape poverty, problems at home, and the neighborhood. For Leeds, running reminds him of the life in Kenya that he and his family were forced to flee, its only palpable legacy the deterioration of his parents' marriage, his mother's worsening health, and his own newly discovered self-destructive tendencies. Kipligat's Chance plunges us into the world of competitive running, and the enormous mental and physical demands of becoming a world-class athlete. Running as sport, running as escape: the lines quickly blur for Leeds and his friends. In Leeds, Odhiambo has created a protagonist whose humor and courage are utterly compelling. With a keen ear for language, and dialogue that is pungent and gritty, Kipligat's Chance is a startling novel, harsh and powerful, from an emerging writer.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312329547
• ISBN13: 9780312329549
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.4"

Customer Reviews

Exhilarating

The young protagonists of David Odhiambo's novel Kipligat's Chance test the limits of their bodies and their wills as they strive for both the gilded limelight of the Olympics and the material payoff afforded by scholarships to prestigious American universities. The author himself is testing limits in this important work, as well; boundaries of race, age, nationality, gender, and creed are all stretched in this dazzling, harrowing cascade from pillar to post. The story is narrated by John "Leeds" Kipligat, and follows the young African-Canadian runner and his best friend Kulvinder-also an athlete with Olympic aspirations-as they attempt to dream a passage out of obscurity and poverty. First comes the act of imagining the possibility of better, more prosperous lives ("We'll meet chicks from places like Toronto"), next comes the regimented training that the two hopefuls must endure under the strict mentorship of Sam Holt, an Olympic has-been turned track coach, and alongside two women runners who are driven towards similar goals. In a story that revolves around running and racing, there is sure to be a certain quantity of intensity and speed, and Kipligat's Chance is a marathon of vigor. But there is also much humor, compassion, and love, delivered with ineffable subtlety by Odhiambo, filtered through the harshness and profanity of the young men's worlds. In a jacket quote from George Elliott Clarke, we read: "In this masterful novel, James Brown grit meets James Baldwin grace." The comparison to Baldwin is apt, but perhaps incomplete. One can find traces of Chuck Palahniuk, Grace Paley, and even Charles Bukowski in this dynamic and fertile fiction.

This book will change you.

I enjoyed this book on so many levels. The intertwining of the present-America & past-Kenya is performed masterfully, with both stories building & climaxing concurrently. The past informs the present informs the past in Odhiambo's book. The back and forth is believable, the immigrant experience is believable here. The immigrant experience is haunted by a homeland past here. The characters, the main character "Leeds" especially, are real. They speak real, they make mistakes real, they fall and get back up again. I found myself missing this guy when the book was done. The tensions mount beautifully, with a steady pace, as Leeds finds himself surrounded by increasing troubles. The entire movement of the book plunges forward toward a final race, and the reader is happy to follow. Read this book. It will change you.