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Item Ethnicization and Power Contest: A Historiographical Reading of Ndung’u’s ‘A Friend of the Court’(Laikipia University, 2022) Kipkorir, Julius.,; Chepkwony A.While focusing on the nexus between popular fiction and history, this paper attempts to resurrect the intersection between the two social constructs. Popular fiction is shaped by the historical environment of the time. This paper demonstrates how Ndung’u, in his book, engages with the historical discourse of ethnicization and power contest within the context of Kenya’s politics. It is premised on the exploration of ethnic bigotry as encapsulated in Ndung’u’s A Friend of the Court. History and popular fiction coalesce in reconstructing the country’s transmogrification which depicts the morphing of society. This paper contends that history and fiction are two indices that intertwine since they are social constructs that mirror society. The boundary between fact and fiction, and history and fiction dissolves. The paper reveals a deconstruction process that subverts the essentialist and dominant modes of critical interpretation that privilege and subordinate literary texts on the basis of the dominant historical discourses. It provides an insight on contestation of power as a crux to navigate latitude on the political profligacy. This paper thus situates Ndung’u’s selected text, A Friend of the Court within the context of the current polemics of dialectics on ethnic bigotry that results from ethnicization of political power contest. Keywords: Balkanization, bigotry, discourses, ethnicization, historiography