Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. He went to school in Kenya and went to Makerere University College (then a campus of London University) in Uganda and Leeds University in Britain. Ngugi burst on to the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, as part of the celebration of Uganda’s Independence. In a productive literary period, Ngugi wrote eight short stories, two one-act plays, two novels, and a regular column for the Sunday Nation under the title, As I See It. One of the novels, Weep Not Child, was published to critical acclaim in 1964; followed by the second novel, The River Between (1965). His third was A Grain of Wheat (1967). In 1967, Ngugi became lecturer in English Literature at the University of Nairobi, teaching there until 1977. During his tenure at Nairobi, Ngugi championed the change of name from English to simply Literature to reflect world literature with African and third world literatures at the centre. His first novel in ten years, Petals of Blood, was published in 1977. The novel painted a harsh and unsparing picture of life in modern Kenya. The same year Ngugi’s controversial play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), written with Ngugi wa Mirii, was performed in an open-air theatre. Critical of the injustices of Kenyan society, publicly identified with championing the cause of ordinary Kenyans, and committed to communicating with them in the languages of their daily lives, Ngugi was imprisoned without charge at the end of 1977. Now Ngugi committed himself to writing in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. In prison he wrote the novel Caitani Mutharabaini (1981), translated into English as Devil on the Cross (1982). An international campaign secured his release a year later. However, he was forced into exile, first in Britain and then the USA. His next Gikuyu novel, Matigari, was published in 1986 but was banned in Kenya. Ngugi remained in exile for the duration of the Moi régime. When he and his wife, Njeeri, returned to Kenya in 2004 after twenty-two years in exile, they were attacked by gunmen and narrowly escaped. In 2006 Ngugi published Wizard of the Crow, an English translation of the Gikuyu language novel, Murogi wa Kagogo.