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A Novel
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Book Reviewed by:This article relates to Wizard of the Crow
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
(pronounced GU-gi wa-ti-ONG-go) was born into a
large peasant family, in the Kiambu
district of Kenya in 1938. He was the
fifth child of the third of his father's
four wives and is of Kikuyu descent. He
was baptized James Ngugi, and later
became a devout Christian while at
missionary school; but around 1967 he
rejected his baptismal name, and changed
his name to Ngugi wa Thiong'o. His
family was caught up in the Mau Mau
rebellion (an insurgency by Kenyan
freedom fighters against the British
colonial administration (1952 - 1960)
during which
he lost his stepbrother and his mother
was tortured.
He burst onto the literary scene in East
Africa with the performance of his first
major play, The Black Hermit, at
the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda,
in 1962, while he was still at
university. The following year Kenya
gained its independence from Britain. In
a highly productive literary period,
Ngugi published and wrote stories,
plays, novels, and a Sunday newspaper
column. In 1964 his novel, Weep Not
Child, was published to critical
acclaim (apparently, it was the first
novel in English to be published by an
East African). This was followed by
The River Between and A Grain of
Wheat, which represented a turning
point in the formal and ideological
direction of his works - rejecting
English colonialism and embracing
Marxism.
Between 1967 and 1977 he was a
university lecturer. In 1977 his first
novel in ten years, Petals of Blood,
was published. It painted a harsh and
unsparing picture of life in
neo-colonial Kenya and was received with
critical acclaim in Kenya and abroad.
The same year his controversial play,
Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry
When I Want), co-written with Ngugi
wa Mirii, was performed; it was sharply
critical of the inequalities and
injustices of Kenyan society. Soon
after, wa Thiong'o was arrested and
imprisoned without charge in a maximum
security prison.
In prison, he wrote the novel
Caitaani Mutharabaini on
prison-issued toilet paper, later
translated into English as Devil on the
Cross. He also wrote down notes that
later became the basis of his memoir,
Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary.
After Amnesty International named him a
Prisoner of Conscience, an international
campaign secured his release a year
later, but he was barred by the State
from holding a job at any university or
college. He stayed in Kenya, continuing
to work and voicing his opinions, but in
1982 he learned of plans to arrest him,
so he and his family left for Britain,
later moving to the USA in 1989. He has
continued to write prolifically, and his
books have been translated into more
than thirty languages.
He is now a Distinguished Professor of
English and Comparative Literature at
the University of California, Irvine. He
married his first wife, Nyambura, in
1961 with whom he had six children,
Thiong'o, Kimunya, Nduchu, Mukoma,
Wanjiku and Njoki. Kimunya graduated
with a degree in economics from the
University of Nairobi, the rest attended
US universities. Following Nyambura's
death, wa Thiong'o is now married to Njeeri, with
whom he has two children, 10-year-old
Mumbi-Wanjiku and Thiong'o, aged nine
years. Njeeri also has an older daughter.
For more about Kenya, see the
"BookBrowse Says" for
Unbowed
by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari
Maathai.
This "beyond the book article" relates to Wizard of the Crow. It originally ran in November 2006 and has been updated for the
August 2007 paperback edition.
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