Ngugi Wa Thiongo (Kenya)

World-acclaimed novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and social activist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was born in colonial Kenya in 1938, and was educated at Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Leeds, Britain.

wa Thiong'o's early works such as the play The Black Hermit (1962) and novels Weep Not Child (1964), The River Between (1965) and A Grain of Wheat (1969) eloquently depict the conflicts of the transition from colonialism to post-colonialism and have as one of their major themes the Mau Mau War of Independence, the central historical episode in the making of modern Kenya . wa Thiong'o‘s writing reflected a strong, principled and uncensored political voice. It was a voice that made him a threat to the Kenyan government under the Moi dictatorship.

This came to a head in 1977, when wa Thiong'o's (co-written) political plays The Trial of Dedan Kimathi and Ngaahika Ndeenda ( I Will Marry When I Want ) and novel Petals of Blood - where he boldly denounced the inequalities, injustices and the abuses of power rampant in neo-colonial Kenya - led to his arrest, and imprisonment without trial. In prison, wa Thiong'o made his famous decision to abandon English as his primary language of creative writing and committed himself to writing in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. Following that decision, he wrote, on prison toilet paper, the novel, Caitani Mutharabaini (1981) translated into English as Devil on the Cross . After Amnesty International named wa Thiong'o a Prisoner of Conscience, an international campaign secured his release a year later. However, the Moi dictatorship barred him from jobs at colleges and universities in the country. He resumed his writing and his activities in the theater and in so doing, continued to be an uncomfortable voice for the Moi dictatorship.

In 1982, wa Thiong'o was forced into a twenty-two year long exile after receiving assassination threats from the dictatorship. During his exile, he lectured at many universities in London and the USA and also studied film in Sweden . His next Gikuyu novel, Matigari ma Njiruungi, was published in 1986. Thinking that the novel's protagonist was an actual person, Moi infamously issued a warrant for his arrest but on learning that the character was fictional, had the novel banned instead. Between 1986 and 1996, Matigari ma Njiruungi could not be sold in Kenyan bookshops. The dictatorship also had all of wa Thiong'o's books removed from all educational institutions.

wa Thiong'o has published numerous influential essay collections including Decolonising the Mind, Homecoming and Moving the Centre, and has edited various literary journals. He is a distinguished speaker and recipient of many honors including the 2001 Nonino International Prize for Literature and seven honorary doctorates. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's latest and much awaited novel, Murogo wa Kagogo ( Wizard of the Crow ) was published in 2006 and has been called “a masterpiece, the crowning achievement in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's career thus far .”

Bibliography

 
Murogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow), East African Educational Publishers, 2004, Wizard of the Crow, Secker, 2006
Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa, (The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1996), Oxford University Press, 1998
Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom, Heinemann, 1993,
Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986, Matigari (translated into English by Wangui wa Goro), Heinemann, 1989, Africa World Press, 1994
Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya, 1983 Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary, 1981
Petals of Blood, 1977, Penguin 2002,
Ngaahika ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want) (with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii), 1977, Heinemann Educational Books, 1980
The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (with Micere Githae Mugo), African Publishing Group, 1976,
Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics, Heinemann, 1972
A Grain of Wheat, 1967
The River Between, Heinemann, 1965, Heinemann, 1989
Weep Not, Child, 1964, Heinemann, 1987, McMillan 2005,
The Black Hermit, 1963