Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Timothy J. Reiss (editor)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938-) - formerly known as James Ngũgĩ was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. Today writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is one of East Africa’s leading novelists. He was educated at Kamandura, Manguu and Kinyogori primary schools; Alliance High School, all in Kenya; Makerere University College (then a campus of London University), Kampala, Uganda; and the University of Leeds, Britain. He is recipient of seven Honorary Doctorates viz D Litt (Albright); PhD (Roskilde); D Litt (Leeds); D Litt &Ph D (Walter Sisulu University); PhD (Carlstate); D Litt (Dillard) and D Litt (Auckland University). He is also Honorary Member of American Academy of Letters. A many-sided intellectual, he is novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and social activist.
His books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and his Weep Not Child was the first major novel in English by an East African. His writings on corruption in his native Kenya led to his ’77 imprisonment. Upon release, he was barred from college/university positions and went into exile. He’s taught at several institutions and is currently a professor at UC Irvine (CA). Wizard of the Crow is his first novel in nearly two decades.
Timothy J. Reiss is Emeritus Professor at New York University. His latest books are Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange, Mirages of the Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe, and three earlier collections with Africa World Press. He is finishing a book on Descartes’ thinking as product of his age’s political practice and thought, and another on the European Renaissance as a stage in long continental and oceanic intercultural exchanges.
