Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Ngugi wa Thiong’o 

Kenyan novelist and playwright, many of whose works concern issues of Kenyan independence. Born James Thiong'o Ngugi in Kamiriithu, he changed his name in the late 1960s. Ngugi's first novel, Weep Not, Child (1964), was published while he was at school in England. Having returned to Kenya after finishing his studies, Ngugi's second novel The River Between (1965), had as its background the Mau Mau rebellion (1952-1956), in which a group of the Kikuyu people began a campaign of violence against the British, who controlled Kenya at the time. This subject re-emerged in A Grain of Wheat (1967), a novel in which Mau Mau bloodshed is set against celebrations of Kenyan independence. The impact of Ngugi's next novel, Petals of Blood (1977), a story discussing the poor quality of life in East Africa, particularly for Kenya's lower classes, even after independence from the United Kingdom in 1963, led to his detention in 1978 under Kenya's Public Security Act. He recounted his prison experience in Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981). The play Ngaahika Ndeenda (1977; I Will Marry When I Want, 1982) held that those who had fought the hardest for independence had gained the least, a theme Ngugi returned to in the novel Matigari (1989).Ngugi's works of criticism include Moving the Centre (1993).