John Kiriamiti


John Kiriamiti is a Kenyan former bank robber turned writer. Born in Thuita Village, Kamacharia Location of Murang'a District in Central Kenya, he is the second of the nine children of Albert and Anne Wanjiru Kiriamiti, both primary school teachers in Murang'a.

Background

Kiriamiti is best known as the writer of My Life in Crime and , which were both a sensation with Kenyan youth in the late 1980s and '90s.
In the years subsequent to his release from Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he has also become a renowned philanthropist and social reformist rehabilitating street children and thieves in his rural Murang'a home. Besides writing novels, Kiriamiti owns and edits a newspaper, The Sharpener, which he established after the government ban on the Gikuyu version, Inooro, in 1995.