Book Cover Image of Minutes of Glory: And Other Stories by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Minutes of Glory: And Other Stories
by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

    Publication Date: Mar 05, 2019
    List Price: $24.99
    Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
    Classification: Fiction
    ISBN13: 9781620974650
    Imprint: The New Press
    Publisher: The New Press
    Parent Company: The New Press

    Description of Minutes of Glory: And Other Stories by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

    A dazzling short story collection from the person Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls one of the greatest writers of our time
    Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, although renowned for his novels, memoirs, and plays, honed his craft as a short story writer. From The Fig Tree, written in 1960, his first year as an undergraduate at Makerere University College in Uganda, to the playful The Ghost of Michael Jackson, written as a professor at the University of California, Irvine, these collected stories reveal a master of the short form.

    Covering the period of British colonial rule and resistance in Kenya to the bittersweet experience of independence—and including two stories that have never before been published in the United States — Ngũgĩ’s collection features women fighting for their space in a patriarchal society, big men in their Bentleys who have inherited power from the British, and rebels who still embody the fighting spirit of the downtrodden. One of Ngũgĩ’s most beloved stories, Minutes of Glory, tells of Beatrice, a sad but ambitious waitress who fantasizes about being feted and lauded over by the middle-class clientele in the city’s beer halls. Her dream leads her on a witty and heartbreaking adventure.

    Published for the first time in America, Minutes of Glory and Other Stories is a major literary event that celebrates the storytelling might of one of Africa’s best-loved writers.