Grand old man of letters

The life and work of Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has intersected with many of the past century's biggest events. At 85, he reflects on his long, uncompromising life in writing

- Carey Baraka

Approach

In October, I flew to Irvine, California, to meet the novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. He is a giant of African writing, and to a Kenyan writer like me he looms especially large. Alongside writers such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, he was part of a literary scene that flourished in the 1950s and 60s, during the last years of colonialism on the continent. If Achebe was the prime mover who captured the deep feeling of displacement that colonisation had wreaked, and Soyinka the witty, guileful intellectual who tried to make sense of the collision between African tradition and Western ideas of freedom, then Ngũgĩ was the unabashed militant. His writing was direct and cutting, his books a weapon – first against the colonial state, and later against the failures and corruption of Kenya’s post-independence ruling elite.