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The Guardian
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o obituary
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who has died aged 87, was long regarded as east Africa's most eminent writer and, along with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, a founding father of African literature in English. Like Achebe, his novels showed the social, psychological and economic impact of the colonial encounter in Africa, as well as the disillusion that followed independence. In later years Ngũgĩ championed writing in African languages and published fiction, drama and poetry in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. His first novel, Weep Not Child (1964), told the story of brothers who respond in different ways to the struggle in the 1950s for independence from British rule by the Land and Freedom Army (also known as the Mau Mau) in his native Kenya, and depicted the brutality of the British in their attempts to quell the rebellion. After Ngũgĩ showed the manuscript to Achebe at an African writers' conference in Makere, Uganda, in 1962, Achebe secured its publication (under the name James Ngũgĩ) in the Heinemann African Writers series. It was awarded Unesco's first prize at the World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal in 1966. Thereafter, many more of Ngũgĩ's novels and short stories were published in that series. A Grain of Wheat (1967), considered by some critics his best work of fiction, is set during celebrations for Kenya's independence day and deals with issues of single-minded heroism and betrayal, as well as the sufferings of detainees and women during the struggle for freedom. An earlier novel, The River Between (1965), featured an unhappy romance and divisions between Christians and non-Christians. It was written while Ngũgĩ was studying for a master's degree in the UK, at the University of Leeds. Ngũgĩ also wrote plays, including The Black Hermit (1962), which dramatises a conflict between the desire to stay with the traditional world of a rural village and the wish to benefit from modern improvements and wealth, and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written in 1976 with Micere Githae Mugo, focusing on the deeds and aims of a leader of the Mau Mau. Appointed professor of English literature and fellow of creative writing at the University of Nairobi in 1967, Ngũgĩ argued successfully for the re-formation of the department to place African literatures, including oral literatures and writing in African languages, at its centre. At this time he changed his name from James Thiong'o Ngũgĩ to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He also published a series of influential essays gathered later in Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972). Increasingly alienated by the corruption and authoritarian policies that characterised Kenya's government under Jomo Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, Ngũgĩ was influenced in his later writing by Frantz Fanon and Marxist ideology. Petals of Blood (1977), the last of his novels composed in English, was completed while he stayed in Yalta in Crimea, as a guest of the Soviet Union. Its central character, Wanja, a barmaid and prostitute, becomes a symbol of Kenya and the capitalist exploitation of labour, raped and damaged by corrupt businessmen and politicians. In the same year that Petals of Blood was published, Ngũgĩ became involved in creating community theatre along the lines advocated by Fanon. Together with the Kenyan playwright Ngũgĩ wa Mirii he composed a play in Gikuyu, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which included members of village audiences as actors and vocal responders. Its success, allied to its outspoken criticism of the Kenyan establishment, led to Ngũgĩ's arrest in 1977. He was detained in Kamiti maximum security prison in Nairobi for almost a year, until released partly through the intervention of Amnesty International. Finding that he had been stripped of his professorship and facing threats to his family, he left Kenya for Britain in 1982. While in prison Ngũgĩ had used sheets of toilet paper to write Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (The Devil on the Cross), his first novel in Gikuyu. Drawing on styles and forms reminiscent of traditional ballad singers, the novel mingles fantasy and realism to satirise wealthy Kenyans who exploit the poor. In Britain between 1982 and 1985 he worked with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya and was writer-in-residence for the London borough of Islington. He was also in demand as a speaker at conferences promoting the reading and study of African and other Commonwealth literatures, often explaining his conviction that African and other indigenous writers should cease writing fiction in English, 'the language of the oppressor'. His arguments were later published in several collections of essays, including Barrel of a Pen (1982) and Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986). Born in the village of Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kenya, Ngũgĩ was the son of Ngũgĩ wa Ndūcū, a landowner, and his third wife, Wanjiku, in a family consisting of four wives and 28 children. After primary education in the village school he was sent as a boarder to the Alliance high school near Nairobi. There students were made to speak in English only, and beaten if caught speaking Gikuyu or other indigenous languages. On his return home after his first term, he found that his village had been razed by British forces opposing the Mau Mau insurrection. His family were divided in their attitudes to the Mau Mau; some members opposed it, and one became an informer to the British government, while a half-brother joined the movement, another was detained, and a third, who was deaf, was shot in the back when he failed to stop in response to a command he did not hear. His mother had been detained and also abused. Ngũgĩ went on to complete a degree in English at Makerere University College in Uganda in 1963, and in 1964 won a scholarship to Leeds. That same year he married his first wife, Nyambura, a teacher, farmer and small trader. He taught English and African literatures at the University of Nairobi from 1967 to 1977, while also serving as a fellow in creative writing at Makerere University. Following his release from detention in December 1978 and subsequent move to the UK, he remained an exile from Kenya. His one attempt to return, in 2004, resulted in a brutal robbery and a sexual assault on his second wife, Njeeri, an incident that Ngũgĩ strongly suspected was encouraged by people close to the government. While teaching in the UK and the US, Ngũgĩ wrote several memoirs, including Detained: a Writer's Prison Diary (1982, updated as Wrestling With the Devil, 2018), Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer's Awakening (2016). He also continued to write fiction in Gikuyu. His verse epic retelling the Gikuyu myth of origin, Kenda Mũiyũru: Rũgano rwa Gĩkũyũ na Mũmbi (2019), translated by Ngũgĩ as The Perfect Nine, was the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker prize. He was the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees across the world, and was often seen as a leading candidate for the Nobel prize for literature; so much so that in 2010 many reporters gathered outside his home on the day of its announcement. When it became clear that the award had gone to Mario Vargas Llosa, Ngũgĩ seemed much less disappointed than the reporters, whom he had to console. Having separated from Nyambura, who did not accompany him into exile, Ngũgĩ married Njeeri, a counsellor and therapist at the University of California, in 1992; they separated in 2023. He is survived by 10 children and seven grandchildren. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (James Thiong'o Ngũgĩ), writer and activist, born 5 January 1938; died 28 May 2025
TimesLIVE
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: A voice of fire, a mind of freedom
In the corridors of postcolonial thought and the vast terrain of African letters, one name echoes with the clarity of resistance and the depth of conviction: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. To speak of Ngũgĩ is to speak not only of literature but of struggle, not only of art but of liberation. His words have long outgrown the pages they were written on. They have become weapons against forgetting, monuments to dignity and blueprints for cultural self-reclamation. Born into a Kenya ravaged by British imperialism, Ngũgĩ's life was shaped by the brutality and disorientation of colonial rule. The soil of his childhood was soaked in the blood of the Mau Mau Rebellion and the shadows of empire loomed large over every classroom, every church sermon and every official document. The colonial legacy, as he would later argue, was not only political but deeply epistemic. It had dismembered the African mind, made us strangers to our own histories, and taught us to mistrust our languages, customs, and gods. Ngũgĩ did not take this betrayal lying down. Instead, he turned his life into a mission of re-membering what had been dismembered. His early novels, including The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, and Petals of Blood, captured with devastating beauty the psychic toll of colonialism and the ambiguities of independence. These works did not flatter, they interrogated. They held both the coloniser and the complicit postcolonial elites to account. Through them, Ngũgĩ laid bare the reality that political freedom without cultural sovereignty is no freedom at all. His resistance was not merely theoretical. It crystallised in acts of profound courage. One of the most emblematic of these was his collaboration with Ngũgĩ wa Mĩriĩ on the searing play I Will Marry When I Want. This was art not written for the academy or for foreign publishers, but for peasants and workers. It was performed in Gikuyu, staged in villages, and filled with the raw anger of the dispossessed. The play dissected class exploitation, cultural alienation and religious hypocrisy. It exposed the spiritual residue of empire that lingered long after flags changed hands. The state responded with repression. Ngũgĩ was arrested and imprisoned without trial. He witnessed the machinery of authoritarianism turn its sights on artists and thinkers. Yet, even in a maximum-security prison, he wrote. He used toilet paper, working in secret. For Ngũgĩ, the pen has always been more than a tool. It is a flame. And fire, once lit, cannot be imprisoned. He emerged from prison not broken but more radicalised. He rejected English as his language of literary expression and deliberately embraced Gikuyu. This was not merely a linguistic shift; it was an intellectual revolution. By choosing to write in his mother tongue, Ngũgĩ defied the colonial assumption that knowledge must pass through Western filters to be legitimate. He insisted that African stories, philosophies, and epistemologies were complete in themselves and must be told in the languages of their birth. The exploitation of African labour continues under new names. The erasure of African languages continues in global curricula. The theft of African futures is repackaged as foreign direct investment and foreign aid In doing so, Ngũgĩ offered a profound lesson to all of us. The true struggle is not only political but also cognitive. The colonisation of the mind is perhaps the most enduring of empires. It is only through cultural self-knowledge that we begin to dismantle it. He became a fierce advocate for the decolonisation of education, challenging African institutions to stop reproducing the logic of empire and to begin producing knowledge grounded in African realities, cosmologies and aspirations. He called on Africa to shape its own future. His work remains painfully relevant. In the face of contemporary struggles such as neocolonial economic dependency, cultural commodification, migration crises and state repression, Ngũgĩ's voice reminds us that these are not isolated events. They are echoes of a past never fully confronted. The exploitation of African labour continues under new names. The erasure of African languages continues in global curricula. The theft of African futures is repackaged as foreign direct investment and foreign aid. He stood with Africans who demanded the nationalisation of the banks, the gold mines and the land. These were people who sought to strike a fatal blow at the financial and gold-mining monopolies, and at the farming interests that have, for centuries, plundered the continent and condemned its people to servitude. Such a step is not only necessary but also imperative. The realisation of the continent's goals is inconceivable, indeed impossible, unless and until these monopolies are dismantled and the wealth of the continent is returned to its people. The democratisation and breaking up of these monopolies will open new fields for the development of a prosperous non-European bourgeois class. For the first time in the continent's history, this class will have the opportunity to own, in its own name and right, mines and factories. Trade and private enterprise will grow and flourish as never before. His life and work teach us the following truth: to be African is not a passive identity but an active resistance. We must speak our truth in our own tongues. We must love ourselves deeply enough to fight for our histories, our knowledge systems, and our collective future And yet, Ngũgĩ does not leave us in despair. He is, at his core, a writer of hope. His belief in the power of ordinary people to resist, to imagine, and to transform is unshakeable. He believes in the strength of solidarity among workers and intellectuals, women and men, Africans and diasporic communities. He believes, deeply, in the power of the word to awaken, to mobilise and to heal. His life and work teach us the following truth: to be African is not a passive identity but an active resistance. We must speak our truth in our own tongues. We must love ourselves deeply enough to fight for our histories, our knowledge systems, and our collective future. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is not simply a writer. He is a compass. He is a map-maker for generations seeking direction in a postcolonial maze. He is a sower of intellectual seeds that bloom in classrooms, prisons, fields and stages across the continent. We honour him not just for what he has written, but for what he has ignited: the right to be fully African, unapologetically human, and radically free. We will forever salute Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a pan-Africanist of note. Your pen is not only mighty; it is immortal. Andile Lungisa is an ANC national executive committee member and former president of the Pan African Youth Union.
Daily Maverick
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — 5 things you should know about one of Africa's greatest writers
The late Kenyan author committed to giving voice to the decolonial moment and vowed, in the late 1970s, to write only in his home language. One of Africa's most celebrated authors, Kenyan writer and academic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, has died at 87. Having published his first novel – Weep Not, Child – in 1964, Ngũgĩ pursued a rich and acclaimed career as a writer, teacher and decolonial thinker. His last creative effort was Kenda Muiyuru (The Perfect Nine), a Gikuyu epic that was longlisted for the 2021 International Man Booker Prize. Kenyan academic and writer Peter Kimani sets out five things you should know about this legendary African writer. He understood the politics of his time Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is regarded as one of Africa's greatest writers of all time. He grew up in what became known as Kenya's White Highlands at the height of British colonialism. Unsurprisingly, his writing examines the legacy of colonialism and the intricate relationships between locals seeking economic and cultural emancipation and the local elites serving as agents of neo-colonisers. The great expectations for the new country, as captured in his seminal play, The Black Hermit, anticipated the disillusionment that followed. His fiction, from the foundational trilogy of Weep Not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat, amplify those expectations, before the optimism is replaced by disillusionment in Petals of Blood. He shaped a new African story African fiction is fairly young. Ngũgĩ stands in the continent's pantheon of writers who started writing when Africa's decolonisation gained momentum. In a certain sense, the writers were involved in constructing new narratives that would define their people. But Ngũgĩ's recognition goes beyond his pioneering role at home: his writing resonates with many across the continent. One could also recognise his consistency at churning out high-quality stories about Africa's contemporary society. This he always did in a way that illustrates his complete commitment to equality and social justice. He has done much more, through scholarship. His treatise, Decolonising the Mind, now a foundational text in postcolonial studies, illustrates his versatility. His ability to spin the yarns while commenting on the politics that goes into literary production of marginal literature is a very rare combination indeed. Finally, one could talk about Ngũgĩ's cultural and political activism. This precipitated his year-long detention without trial in 1977. He attributed his detention to his rejection of English and embracing his Gikuyu language as his vehicle of expression. Critics are divided on his greatest works It's hard to pick a favourite from Ngũgĩ's more than two dozen texts. But there is concurrence among critics that A Grain of Wheat, which was voted among Africa's best 100 novels at the turn of the last century, stands out for its stylistic experimentation and complexity of characters. Others consider the novel as the last signpost before Ngũgĩ's work became overly political. For other critics, it's Wizard of the Crow – which came out in 2004, after nearly two decades of waiting – that encapsulates his creative finesse. It utilises many literary tropes, including magical realism, and addresses the politics of African development and the shenanigans by the political elite to maintain the status quo. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages around the world. He stopped writing in English in 1977 Without a doubt, Africa would be poorer without the efforts of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and other pioneering writers to tell the African story. He was an important figure in postcolonial studies. His constant questioning of the privileging of the English language and culture in Kenya's national discourse saw him lead a movement that led to the scrapping of the Department of English at the University of Nairobi – replaced by a Department of Literature that placed African literature and its diasporas at the centre of scholarship. He never stopped writing Ngũgĩ remained active in writing, even in old age. Among his later offerings was the third instalment of his memoir, Birth of a Dreamweaver, that looks back on his years at Makerere University in Uganda. This is the period when he published his novels Weep Not, Child and The River Between, while still an undergraduate. Also at this time he wrote the play The Black Hermit, which was performed as part of Uganda's independence celebrations in 1962. In later years he was busy restoring his early works into Gikuyu, from English. Ngũgĩ appeared on the list of favourites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for a number of years. Since the workings of the Nobel award committee remain secret – the committee's deliberations are kept secret for 50 years – it will be decades before we know why he was overlooked when so many felt he deserved the prize. DM Peter Kimani is professor of practice at Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications in Karachi, Pakistan.
Straits Times
07-06-2025
- General
- Straits Times
TBR (To Be Read): What the late Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who rejected English, can teach Singapore
Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote Devil On The Cross (1980), his first novel in his native Gikuyu language, in prison on toilet paper. PHOTO: REUTERS SINGAPORE – One Wednesday evening in 2017, when I was a literature undergraduate, Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o – who famously stopped writing in English and switched defiantly to his native Gikuyu – made an appearance on campus and said something that has troubled me since. He was almost 80, subdued in manner, and often dropped the kind of pithy sentence that inspired not applause but reverential silence, then scribbling. To the Singapore audience, he had said: 'If you know all the languages of the world, but not your mother tongue, that is enslavement.' Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
The Wire
01-06-2025
- The Wire
How Ngugi wa Thiong'o Turned Away from English to the Language of His People to Write Great Literature
Rarely do fiction writers pay a price as heavy as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) did for writing. He lost his Nairobi University job, was imprisoned, spent many years in exile, was attacked and robbed, and his wife was sexually assaulted when he returned to Kenya on a visit. Tragedy and hardship were not new to Ngugi. When he was young, and Kenya was a British colony, one of his brothers was shot dead because, being deaf, he did not hear the English officer's command to stop. Ngugi had lived through the historic Mau Mau rebellion, during which his village, Limuru, was destroyed by British soldiers. His mother was arrested and spent three months in solitary confinement. All these experiences fed Ngugi's hatred for colonialism and imperialism, turned him towards Marxism and fueled his creativity. Turning adversity to advantage, Ngugi wrote his novel Devil on the Cross on rolls of toilet paper while in jail. Ngugi wa Thiongo's birth name was James Ngugi. In 1938, when he was born, Kenya was an English colony. By the time he changed his name around 1970, Kenya was a formally independent nation. But colonial legacies are sticky, stubborn and persistent. In 1977, after seventeen years of writing in English, Ngugi abandoned it and began writing in his native language, Gikuyu. This was hardly easy. English was the colonialists' language, but it was also an international language. Writing in English potentially gave access to a readership that was spread across the world. English also had the paraphernalia that enables circulation of literary works – publishing houses, journals and newspapers, university courses, etc. – that native languages such as Gikuyu lacked. Many languages of the colonial subjects did not even have a script. Also read: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: The Kenyan Icon Who Wrote For Freedom Till the Very End Ngugi went a step further. In his view, 'language was the most important vehicle through which [colonial] power fascinated and held the soul prisoner. The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.' This also had a class dimension. African literature written in European languages was 'the literature of the petty-bourgeoisie.' And while it was true that this class was far from homogeneous, ranging from agents of imperialism to nationalists or even socialists, and that the literature they produced did play a part in projecting a dignified image of Africa and Africans, the class roots of this literature yet constrained it. For Ngugi, there was no alternative. The language of the coloniser and the imperialist had to be abandoned. The language of his people – the masses of people, the peasantry and the working class – had to be embraced. But languages are not like shirts, you can't just toss one aside and wear another. 'Language, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture.' His first work in Gikuyu was a play, I Will Marry When I Want (in collaboration with Ngugi wa Mirii), followed by the novel Devil on the Cross , the musical play Mother Sing for Me , and several other works, including his 2006 opus, Wizard of the Crow . How the play came to be is a fascinating story. One day in 1976, a woman from Kamiriithu village came to Ngugi with a request: 'We hear you have a lot of education and that you write books. Why don't you give some of that education to the village?' There was a somewhat decrepit youth centre in the village, she said, and they wanted help to revive it. She visited Ngugi every week for the next month or so, till he relented. This is how he came to be associated with the Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre. At the centre, theatre was to be part of a larger cultural enterprise – the revival of pride in being Kenyan, in being African. Spreading literacy was one part of this revival. Theatre was the other. But they had no theatre – that is, an auditorium or playhouse. The peasants of Kamiriithu cleared an empty area and erected a stage, which was no more than a mud platform, and created makeshift seating for the audience. As Ngugi write later, 'Theatre is not a building. People make theatre. Their life is the very stuff of drama.' But what language do you use when making plays around the lives of ordinary, working people? Not a language that sounds foreign to the people, that is alien to their history. Ngugi, again: 'It was Kamiriithu which forced me to turn to Gikuyu and hence into what for me has amounted to 'an epistemological break' with my past.' The story of I Will Marry When I Want (original title: Ngaahika Ndeenda ) by Ngugi wa Thiongo and Ngugi wa Mirii revolves around the proletarianisation of the peasantry in a recently colonised country. In Ngugi's words, the play 'shows the way the Kiguunda family, a poor peasant family, which has to supplement their subsistence on their one and a half acres with the sale of their labour, is finally deprived of even the one and a half acres by a multinational consortium of Japanese and Euro-American industrialists and bankers aided by the native comprador landlords and businessmen.' If this sounds a bit like the 1952 Bimal Roy film Do Bigha Zameen , that's not because the two Ngugis had seen it, but because the experiences of ex-colonies were similar in many ways. Since the rehearsals of the play took place in the open, many villagers would sit around watching. In time, many of them knew the entire play by heart. They would bring their families and friends, and gradually, pretty much the entire village had seen the play before it opened. Many of them gave critical feedback and suggestions. Ngugi, used to the idea of a 'premiere' where a play is 'unveiled' in front of an admiring audience, wondered if anyone at all would come to watch when shows actually began. When the play opened on October 2, 1977, it was an immediate success. The villagers of Kamiriithu came, of course, but not so much as spectators as hosts. It was their play, and they had spread the word far and wide to other villages. The play became part of a spontaneous festival, a mela. One time, it rained so hard that the actors had to stop and the spectators had to take shelter. This happened three times. Yet, every time the play resumed, they found that no one from the audience had left. The play ran every day, drawing new and repeat audiences every day. It was a triumph. Till the Kenyan government banned any further performances of it on November 16, 1977. Ngugi was arrested on the last day of 1977 and spent the whole of the following year in a maximum security prison. Ngugi wa Thiong'o with the author, Sudhanva Deshpande. I met Ngugi in February 2018, and we spent several hours together in Kolkata and Delhi. I was invited by Seagull Books, his publisher, to engage him in a public conversation at the Victoria Memorial . I also interviewed him for Newsclick in Delhi. In these recorded interactions, I asked the questions and he answered. Off camera, though, it was the opposite. He was endlessly curious – about India (which he was visiting for the second time); about literature in various Indian languages; about India's relations with Pakistan; about the Indian Left movement and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in particular; about Jana Natya Manch, the theatre group I work with, and its founder Safdar Hashmi, who was murdered while performing; about how I came into theatre and became part of the communist movement; about my father, who was also a playwright; about the food we ate; and on and on. We interacted again, briefly, this time on email, when LeftWord Books published a set of essays called The East Was Read: Socialist Culture in the Third World , edited by Vijay Prashad. He wrote an essay on how the Soviet Union helped him when he was writing his novel Petals of Blood . The book has an essay by Deepa Bhasthi on her communist grandfather's library. Bhasthi recently won the International Booker Prize, for which Ngugi was also nominated a few years ago. In fact, he is the only person to have been nominated for a translation of his own work, and the only writer to have been nominated for a work in an African language. I asked Ngugi how on earth he wrote on toilet paper, which is so flimsy and highly absorbent. He laughed. 'Not the toilet paper they gave us in jail. It was hard and thick. It was meant to hurt our bums. I used it to hurt theirs.' As the world bids farewell to this giant of world literature, it is this spirit, indomitable and playfully subversive, that will continue to inspire. Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor and publisher. He is the author of 'Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi' (LeftWord Books 2020).
