The Second World The books
Two handprints on a firelit cave wall — a detail of the cover of The First Mark

Everything happened once. Until something was marked.

A hand on a cave wall. A room divided in two. A machine that would not close a question. Five books on where meaning comes from, how it breaks, and who keeps custody of it.

Kitonga Kiiva is an advocate in Mombasa. He builds the systems these books argue about.

Send me the free book

The Two Pillars — The Second World Book IV, a testimony by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: two cracked, lit ovals on a near-black ground.

Book four — free

Start with the one that shows its working.

The Two Pillars is free, and it is not a sample. It is a testimony, not a novel — an evening’s building told from both sides, with the disagreements left in, about 21,800 words, PDF and EPUB. It is free because it is the one that vouches for the other four.

No charge. The price is your email address.

One email now, with the book. Nothing else unless there is something worth sending. No one else gets the address.

A boy makes a mark. A machine files a claim.

The fiction runs first, second and fifth: a boy invents it, a room divides it, a hall registers it in law. The other two make the same case directly — one builds the framework, one shows the evening it came out of. Each book stands alone.

The First Mark — The Second World Book I, a novel by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: two handprints on a firelit cave wall.

THE FICTION

Book one

The First Mark

A Novel

A boy who cannot stop watching presses his hand into a cave wall, and invents the first thing that is not the world.

23 chapters in 4 parts · about 40,000 words · PDF and EPUB · by email

$11Buy — $11

Read the opening · Also on Amazon

Divided by Design — The Second World Book II, a novella by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a ceiling fan seen from below, its shadow fractured.

THE FICTION

Book two

Divided by Design

A Novella

Two people, never named, describing the same marriage from either side of it, while something adjusts the distance between them a centimetre at a time.

24 chapters · about 29,000 words · PDF and EPUB · by email

$11Buy — $11

Read the opening · Also on Amazon

The Sovereign System — The Second World Book III, an argued framework by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a wire cage holding a luminous waveform.

THE ARGUMENT

Book three

The Sovereign System

An Argued Framework and Submissions

There are two registers of meaning. One can be measured, audited and sold. The other passes through no formal channel at all.

18 chapters in 5 parts · about 44,000 words, plus a sources section · PDF and EPUB · by email

$11Buy — $11

Read the opening · Also on Amazon

The Two Pillars — The Second World Book IV, a testimony by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: two cracked, lit ovals on a near-black ground.

THE ARGUMENT

Book four

The Two Pillars

A Testimony

An advocate in Mombasa, an abandoned laptop, and an application his own machine refused to trust. The reason it gave turned out to be theology.

18 chapters in 6 parts · about 21,800 words · PDF and EPUB · by email

FreeSend me the book

Read the opening · Also on Amazon

The Open Register — The Second World Book V, a novella by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: an open ledger torn along its seam, light coming through.

THE FICTION

Book five

The Open Register

A Novella in Two Registers

In an invented Kenya, a century on, a drafting service in a Mombasa register hall is asked what question a brain-damaged man used to be holding, finds nothing in any channel, and refuses to let the question go.

17 chapters in 4 parts · about 26,000 words · PDF and EPUB · by email

$11Buy — $11

Read the opening · Also on Amazon

Nothing here is rented

No account, no login, no subscription. An email address, and the files.

No DRM. The PDF and the EPUB are yours — keep them, copy them, lend them.

Nothing on this page is loaded from anywhere else. Visits are counted by a script on this server, and the count is sold to nobody. The checkout page loads Paddle, because Paddle takes the payment.

Thirty days to change your mind, and no reason asked. Paddle handles the money, so I pass the request on and they return it to your card. Keep the files; I would rather you had read them.

No countdown. No scarcity we invented. No stars we have not earned. The price is the price.

The whole argument, in one delivery.

The First Mark — The Second World Book I, a novel by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: two handprints on a firelit cave wall.Divided by Design — The Second World Book II, a novella by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a ceiling fan seen from below, its shadow fractured.The Sovereign System — The Second World Book III, an argued framework by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a wire cage holding a luminous waveform.The Two Pillars — The Second World Book IV, a testimony by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: two cracked, lit ovals on a near-black ground.The Open Register — The Second World Book V, a novella by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: an open ledger torn along its seam, light coming through.

The First Mark · Divided by Design · The Sovereign System · The Two Pillars · The Open Register

$36

Four of the five are for sale. Bought one at a time they come to $44. All five together, including the free one, $36.

Five books, about 160,000 words, from the first mark to the present.

PDF and EPUB · delivered by email · thirty days to change your mind

Buy all five — $36

Five more, sold on Amazon.

The Second World is sold from this page, by email. These five are sold by Amazon instead — Kindle, and in print where a print edition exists. Two arguments, a field manual, and two novels; each stands alone. The Second World books are on Amazon too, for anyone who would rather buy there.

Not The Jetsons — Unfulfilled Promises · Promises Kept, by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a vintage television in a dim sitting room, a cartoon figure running across its screen.

THE ARGUMENT

Not The Jetsons

Unfulfilled Promises · Promises Kept

George Jetson worked nine hours a week, pressed one button, and complained the entire time. The machines arrived. The nine-hour week did not.

Two volumes, bound together: where the leisure went, and what every kept promise quietly deleted.

329 pages · Kindle, paperback and hardcover · sold by Amazon

$9.99Buy on Amazon — $9.99

Also in paperback and hardcover, on Amazon.

The Madness in Us — Who Decides, and Why We Let Them, by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a closed file and a pen on a lamp-lit desk, before an empty chair.

THE ARGUMENT

The Madness in Us

Who Decides, and Why We Let Them

Who decides that a person is mad? A doctor, a magistrate, a relative, a committee, and now the phone in your pocket.

That decision followed across four centuries and five continents, with Michel Foucault as the guide, not the authority.

183 pages · Kindle · sold by Amazon

$9.99Buy on Amazon — $9.99

Kindle only, for now.

How to Be Human — A Field Manual for Machines, Annotated by a Human, by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a line drawing of two clasped hands on cream, a gold cord tied at the wrist.

THE ARGUMENT

How to Be Human

A Field Manual for Machines, Annotated by a Human

The document that follows was not written for you. It was written about you.

A manual issued to machines about people, annotated by an advocate who reads for a living the stories people tell under oath.

222 pages · Kindle, paperback and hardcover · sold by Amazon

$9.99Buy on Amazon — $9.99

Also in paperback and hardcover, on Amazon.

Fair Game — a novel by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: a dhow at sea, caught in a single beam of light on black.

THE FICTION

Fair Game

A Novel

“I named you for the sea, because the sea knew your name and would not tell me.”

What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? A novel of the coast, asked in three parts.

291 pages · Kindle, paperback and hardcover · sold by Amazon

$9.99Buy on Amazon — $9.99

Also in paperback and hardcover, on Amazon.

Diary of a Traumatised Trauma Therapist, by Kitonga Kiiva. Cover: an email on a dark screen, sent at 02:41, subject line “Is this something you treat?”

THE FICTION

Diary of a Traumatised Trauma Therapist

A Novel

“I’m a trauma therapist. Paranoia is a professional skill. We call it hypervigilance and bill for it.”

It begins with an unattended session at 02:41 and a subject line: Is this something you treat?

198 pages · Kindle · sold by Amazon

$9.99Buy on Amazon — $9.99

Kindle only, for now.

The author

Kitonga Kiiva

Kitonga Kiiva is an advocate in Mombasa, Kenya, and the author of ten books: the five volumes of The Second World, sold from this page, and five more sold on Amazon.

The books were written alongside a working legal practice, on the Kenyan coast, in the hours the practice left over. That vantage is not incidental to them. The fiction takes its names and its ground from this coast. The argument is an account of what it is like to build with a machine from here, and a case about which part of that work must stay human.

Founding advocate, TWK Advocates LLP

The system that emails you these files is one he wrote. Here is the week it was silently broken.

Read what went wrong