Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Kenyan author and academic, who has been described as "East Africa's leading novelist".

He began writing in English, switching to write primarily in Gikuyu.

His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature.

He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri.

His short story The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright has been translated into 100 languages.

As a student he attended the African Writers Conference held at Makerere in June 1962, and his play The Black Hermit premiered as part of the event at The National Theatre.

At the conference Ngũgĩ asked Chinua Achebe to read the manuscripts of his novels The River Between and Weep Not, Child, which would subsequently be published in Heinemann's African Writers Series, launched in London that year, with Achebe as its first advisory editor.

Ngũgĩ received his B.A. in English from Makerere University College, Uganda, in 1963.

His debut novel, Weep Not, Child, was published in May 1964, becoming the first novel in English to be published by a writer from East Africa.

Later that year, having won a scholarship to the University of Leeds to study for an MA, Ngũgĩ travelled to England, where he was when his second novel, The River Between, came out in 1965.

The River Between, which has as its background the Mau Mau Uprising, and describes an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians, was previously on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus.

Ngũgĩ's 1967 novel A Grain of Wheat marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism.

In 1967, Ngũgĩ also began teaching at the University of Nairobi as a professor of English literature.

He continued to teach at the university for ten years while serving as a Fellow in Creative Writing at Makerere.

During this time, he also guest lectured at Northwestern University in the department of English and African Studies for a year.

While a professor at the University of Nairobi, Ngũgĩ was the catalyst of the discussion to abolish the English department.

He argued that after the end of colonialism, it was imperative that a university in Africa teach African literature, including oral literature, and that such should be done with the realization of the richness of African languages.

In the late 60s, these efforts resulted in the university dropping English Literature as a course of study, and replacing it with one that positioned African Literature, oral and written, at the centre.

He subsequently renounced writing in English, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; by 1970 he had changed his name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu.

He left Leeds without completing his thesis on Caribbean literature, for which his studies had focused on George Lamming, about whom Ngũgĩ said in his 1972 collection of essays Homecoming: "He evoked for me, an unforgettable picture of a peasant revolt in a white-dominated world. And suddenly I knew that a novel could be made to speak to me, could, with a compelling urgency, touch cords [sic] deep down in me. His world was not as strange to me as that of Fielding, Defoe, Smollett, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, D. H. Lawrence."

In 1976, Thiong'o helped to establish The Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre which, among other things, organised African Theatre in the area.

The following year saw the publication of Petals of Blood.

In 1977, Ngũgĩ embarked upon a novel form of theatre in Kenya that sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be "the general bourgeois education system", by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances.

His project sought to "demystify" the theatrical process, and to avoid the "process of alienation [that] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers" which, according to Ngũgĩ, encourages passivity in "ordinary people".

Although his landmark play Ngaahika Ndeenda, co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening.

Ngũgĩ was subsequently imprisoned for over a year.

Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya.

He was appointed Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine.

He previously taught at Northwestern University, Yale University, and New York University.

Ngũgĩ has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Its strong political message, and that of his play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii and also published in 1977, provoked the then Kenyan Vice-President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest.

Along with copies of his play, books by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin were confiscated.

He was sent to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, and kept there without a trial for nearly a year.

He was imprisoned in a cell with other political prisoners.

During part of their imprisonment, they were allowed one hour of sunlight a day.

He won the 2001 International Nonino Prize in Italy, and the 2016 Park Kyong-ni Prize.

Among his children are authors Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.

Ngũgĩ was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi.

His family was caught up in the Mau Mau Uprising; his half-brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (in which he was killed), another brother was shot during the State of Emergency, and his mother was tortured at Kamiriithu home guard post.

He went to the Alliance High School, and went on to study at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda.