Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, "a groundbreaking novelist, playwright and memoirist whose writings explored the iniquities and ambiguities of colonialism in his native Kenya as much as the misdoings of the postcolonial elite, and who led a passionate campaign for African authors to eschew the languages of foreign occupiers," died May 28, the New York Times reported. He was 87.
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| Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (photo: Daniel Anderson) |
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A perennial Nobel laureate contender, Ngũgĩ spent years in exile due to his criticism of the Kenyan government. His works drew international praise, beginning with his debut novel, Weep Not, Child (1964). He wrote Devil on the Cross (1980) "on prison toilet paper while detained by Kenyan authorities for a year without trial because of a play," Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which he co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii in 1977.
Released in 1978, he went into exile in 1982, and later moved from the U.K. to the U.S., where he became a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, heading its International Centre for Writing and Translation.
Composed in his native tongue as Caitaani Mutharaba-Ini, Devil on the Cross was considered the first modern novel in the Gikuyu language, spoken by the country's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu. The book launched his career writing in his own language and subsequently translating his work into English.
Ngũgĩ's life and writing "unfolded in lock step with the stirrings of emancipation in British-run East Africa," the Times noted. He lived in Uganda, which secured independence in 1962, and in Kenya both before and after its independence in 1963. Educated at Kenya's British-run Alliance High School, he returned home to find that his settlement had been destroyed by British authorities, he recalled in his memoir, In the House of the Interpreter (2012). After his studies at the Alliance, he won a place at Makerere University in Uganda, "which at that time was a cultural and intellectual hub of the emerging Africa of independent nations. It was at Makarere that his emergence as a writer began," the Times noted.
His work "was heavily intertwined with the politics of the era, and his thinking about the far-reaching impact of imperialism on African sensibilities played a central role in a much broader debate," the Times wrote. Ngũgĩ's other books include Grain of Wheat (1967), Decolonizing the Mind (1986), Detained (1980), and Birth of a Dream Weaver (2016).
Pantheon Books posted on social media: "We are deeply saddened by the loss of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, whose bold blend of satire and magical realism reshaped global literature. We were honored to publish Wizard of the Crow, Dreams in a Time of War, and In the House of the Interpreter."
"I have become a language warrior," he told the Los Angeles Review of Books in a 2017 interview. "I want to join all those others in the world who are fighting for marginalized languages. No language is ever marginal to the community that created it. Languages are like musical instruments. You don't say, let there be a few global instruments, or let there be only one type of voice all singers can sing."