In Ear Tag and Other Stories, Silas Silvester Kiptui tells stories the way fires are kept—by passing them carefully from one breath to another. These are tales born of listening: to elders and children, to youth and age, to silence and laughter, to what is said and what is carried without words.

Moving through homesteads, paths, markets, and the inner rooms of the heart, the stories speak of belonging and loss, hunger and hope, inheritance and defiance. Here, the past walks beside the present and memory does not sleep. Characters rise, fall and rise again, shaped by land, language, and the stubborn will to endure.

Rich in rhythm and humane insight, Ear Tag and Other Stories gathers voices that might otherwise fade, reminding us that every life—however ordinary— has a story worth telling, and every story has a home in the listening ear.

For a word does not die in the mouth that carries it; it dies only in the ear that refuses to hear.