Greetings from Grandpa, Jack Mapanje'ssixth volume of poetry is, in broad brush strokes, centred aroundpolitics, exile experience, and religion. The volume follows thelead of the poet's earlier volumes in their preoccupation with thepolitical situation of Malawi but expands the theme to include boththe political situation in Africa, especially in the Arab nations,and global politics and economy in Africa and the West. Thecollection also advances on the themes of exile common in theearlier volumes by the poet but juxtaposes home and exile repeatedlyand focuses on experiences and perceptions of different people indiaspora. In Greetings from Grandpa,Mapanje affirms that home for him is both his family, nuclear andextended family, and Malawi and the village he left for the Westwithout failing to state that there are some migrants who considerexile as home. The religious character of the collection proceedsfrom the focus in ‘On His Divine Reprieve: A Confession’,‘Thanksgiving’, and ‘Saved from Comrade Hippo's Grace’ on the poet'saffirmation that God is sovereign, and his acknowledgement of Hisintervention in human affairs, one of the poet's themes in The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prisonand Skipping Without Ropes. The poet'sfaith-based perceptions of issues are accentuated by his deploymentof religious motifs of confession and thanksgiving in the listedpoems.

In Greetings from Grandpa, Mapanjeexplores different faces and phases of politics in Malawi in ‘OurAnthology of Martyrs Thickens’, ‘Considering Our Golden Jubilees’,‘The White Elephants of Home’, ‘Balamanja North Beach Revisited’,‘Crossing Linthipe Bridge II’, and ‘Saved From Comrade Hippo'sGrace’, while he examines in ‘When Egypt Went Up in Flame’, ‘AnotherDeath So Mean: Libya’, and ‘The Arab Spring’, the series ofanti-government protests, uprising and armed rebellions across muchof the Arab world in the early 2010s. International politics andWest's hypocrisy is the poet's preoccupation in ‘WatchingPalestinians Being Butchered’, and the same theme is alluded to in‘Another Death So Mean: Libya’, and veiled in the concern, in ‘TheWhite Elephants of Home’, with global economy and the disadvantagedposition of the economy of the ‘Third World’ because of thecollaboration of its leaders with global industrialists anddespotism.