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.
In
The House Of The Interpreter: A Memoir
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Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Pantheon (November 6, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307907694
ISBN-13: 978-0307907691
From the world-renowned Kenyan novelist, poet, playwright, and literary critic, the second volume of his memoirs, spanning 1955-1959, the author's high school years during the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising. In the House of the Interpreter evokes a haunting childhood at the end of British colonial rule in Africa, and the formative experiences of a political dissident.
Dreams
in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir
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Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Pantheon (March 9, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307378837
ISBN-13: 978-0307378835
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and author of Wizard of
the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir of childhood.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a father whose four
wives bore him more than a score of children. The man who would become one
of Africa’s leading writers was the fifth child of the third wife. Even as
World War II affected the lives of Africans under British colonial rule in
particularly unexpected ways, Ngugi spent his childhood as very much the
apple of his mother’s eye before attending school to slake what was then
considered a bizarre thirst for learning.
In Dreams in a Time of War, Ngugi deftly etches a bygone era, capturing the
landscape, the people, and their culture; the social and political
vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war; and the troubled
relationship between an emerging Christianized middle class and the rural
poor. And he shows how the Mau Mau armed struggle for Kenya’s independence
against the British informed not only his own life but also the lives of
those closest to him.
Dreams in a Time of War speaks to the human right to dream even in the worst
of times. It abounds in delicate and powerful subtleties and complexities
that are movingly told.
Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance
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Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books (February 23, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465009468
ISBN-13: 978-0465009466
Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
Novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has been a force in African literature for decades: Since the 1970s, when he gave up the English language to commit himself to writing in African languages, his foremost concern has been the critical importance of language to culture. In Something Torn and New, Ngũgĩ explores Africa's historical, economic, and cultural fragmentation by slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Throughout this tragic history, a constant and irrepressible force was Europhonism: the replacement of native names, languages, and identities with European ones. The result was the dismemberment of African memory.
Seeking to remember language in order to revitalize it, Ngũgĩ's quest is for wholeness. Wide-ranging, erudite, and hopeful, Something Torn and New is a cri de coeur to save Africa's cultural future.
Decolonising
the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
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Paperback: 114 pages
Publisher: James Currey Ltd / Heinemann (November 20,
2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0852555016
ISBN-13: 978-0852555019
'... many of the ideas are familiar from Ngũgĩ's earlier critical books, and earlier lectures, elsewhere. But the material here has a new context and the ideas a new focus. This leading African writer presents the arguments for using African language and forms after successfully using an African language himself.' - Anne Walmsley in 'The Guardian' '... after 25 years of independence, there is beginning to emerge a generation of writers for whom colonialism is a matter of history and not of direct personal experience. In retrospect that literature characterised by Ngũgĩ as "Afro-European" - the literature written by Africans in European languages - will come to be seen as part and parcel of the uneasy period between colonialism and full independence, a period equally reflected in the continent's political instability as it attempts to find its feet. Ngũgĩ's importance - and that of this book - lies in the courage with which he has confronted this most urgent of issues.' - Adewale Maja-Pearce in 'The New Statesman'
Wizard of
the Crow
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Paperback: 784 pages
Publisher: Anchor (August 28, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400033845
ISBN-13: 978-1400033843
Starred Review. The fictional Republic of
Aburiria chronicled in this sprawling, dazzling
satirical fable is an exaggeration of sordid African
despotism. At the top, a grandiose Ruler with "the power
to declare any month in the year the seventh month" and
his sycophantic cabinet plan to climb to heaven with a
modern-day Tower of Babel funded by the Global Bank;
beneath them, a cabal of venal officials and
opportunistic businessmen jockey for a piece of the pie;
at the bottom are the unemployed masses who wait in
endless lines behind every help-wanted sign. Kamiti, an
archetypal New Man with two university degrees and no
job prospects, sets up shop as a wizard; with the help
of Nyawira, member of both an underground dissident
movement and a feminist dance troupe, he dispenses
therapeutic sorcery to a citizenry that finds witchcraft
less absurd than everyday life. Kenyan novelist Thiong'o
(Petals of Blood) mounts a nuanced but caustic
political and social satire of the corruption of African
society, with a touch of magical realism'or, perhaps,
realistic magic, as the wizard's tricks hinge on holding
a not-so-enchanted mirror to his clients' hidden
self-delusions. The result is a sometimes lurid,
sometimes lyrical reflection on Africa's
dysfunctions'and possibilities. (Aug.)
Copyright ' Reed Business Information, a division of
Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
To Stir
the Heart: Four African Stories (Two By Two)
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by Bessie Head & Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (June 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1558615474
ISBN-13: 978-1558615472
From origin myths to tales of modern prostitutes in
search of dignity-even for only a moment-these powerful
stories by two renowned African authors explore the
uneasy coexistence between women and men, tradition and
modernity. They show strong women demanding their right
to marry or not, earn a living, and most importantly, be
respected.
South African-born Bessie Head (19371986) immigrated to
Botswana, where she is considered their most important
writer.
Petals
of Blood
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Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Penguin Classics (February 22, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143039172
ISBN-13: 978-0143039174
Petals of Blood is the fourth novel written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who is more commonly known simply as Ngũgĩ. The novel describes the inequality, hypocrisy, and betrayal of peasants and workers in post-independence Kenya. As with Ngũgĩ's other works, many of the events depicted in the novel have their basis in historical and social fact. The work is a damning indictment of the corruption and greed of Kenya's political, economic, and social elite who, after the struggle for freedom from British rule, have not returned the wealth of the land to its people but rather perpetuate the social injustice and economic inequality that were a feature of colonial oppression. In addition to criticizing this neocolonialism, the novel is also a bitter critique of the economic system of capitalism and its destructive, alienating effects on traditional Kenyan society. More
The
River Between
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Paperback: 152 pages
Publisher: East Africa Education Publishers (2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9966460020
ISBN-13: 978-9966460028
The River Between is a sensitive novel about the Kikuyu in the melting-pot tht sometimes touches on the grandeur of tap-root simplicity. Waiyaki, valuing the old folk-strength and the new missionary teaching, is condemned by both factions for his traffic with the other, and faces the fate of those wise before their time. There is that rarity-an almost wordless love storey that avoids pseudo-nobility while remaining proudly and distinctively African
I Will
Marry When I Want
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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o & Ngũgĩ wa Mirii
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Heinemann; 1 edition (January 1, 1982)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0435902466
ISBN-13: 978-0435902469
This is the renowned play which was developed with Kikuyu actors at the Kamiriithu Cultural Centre at Limuru. It proved so powerful, especially in its use of song, that it was banned and was probably one of the factors leading to Ngũgĩ's detention without trial. The original Gikuyu edition went to three printings in the first three months of publication.
Devil
on the Cross
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Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Heinemann; 1 edition (October 23, 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0435908448
ISBN-13: 978-0435908447
This remarkable and symbolic novel centers around Wariinga's tragedy and uses it to tell a story of contemporary Kenya faced with the "satan of capitalism." Ngũgĩ has directed his writing even more firmly towards the commitment that he shows in Writers in Politics and Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. The novel was written secretly in prison on the only available material -- lavatory paper. It was discovered when almost complete but unexpectedly returned to him on his release. Such was the demand for the original Gikuyu edition that it reprinted on publication.
The
Black Hermit (A Play)
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Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Heinemann; 1 edition (January 1, 1968)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 043590051X
ISBN-13: 978-0435900519
Related Links
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Official Website
BBC News - Profile: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
