Ngugi wa Thiong’o

 Ngugi wa Thiong’o

• Birth:    January 5, 1938
  
• Death:    
• Nationality:   Kamiriithu, Kenya Colony
  
• Education: Makerere University (BA), University of Leeds
• Author URL: https://ngugiwathiongo.com/
• Books Written

Novels

• Weep Not, Child (1964), ISBN 978-0143026242
• The River Between (1965), ISBN 0-435-90548-1
• A Grain of Wheat (1967, 1992), ISBN 0-14-118699-2
• Petals of Blood (1977), ISBN 0-14-118702-6
• Caitaani Mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross, 1980)
• Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986 (Matigari, translated into English by Wangui wa Goro, 1989), ISBN 0-435-90546-5
• Mũrogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow, 2004), ISBN 9966-25-162-6
• The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi (2020)

Short story collections

• A Meeting in the Dark (1974)^[82]
• Secret Lives, and Other Stories, (1976, 1992), ISBN 0-435-90975-4^{[citation needed]}
• Minutes of Glory and Other Stories (2019)^{[citation needed]}

Plays

• The Black Hermit (1963)^{[citation needed]}
• This Time Tomorrow (three plays, including the title play, "The Rebels", "The Wound in the Heart" and "This Time Tomorrow") (1970)^[83]
• Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972), ISBN 0-435-18580-2^{[citation needed]}
• The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976), ISBN 0-435-90191-5, African Publishing Group, ISBN 0-949932-45-0 (with Micere Githae Mugo and Njaka)^[82]
• Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want) (1977, 1982) (with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii)^{[citation needed]}

Memoirs

• Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981)^{[citation needed]}
• Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), ISBN 978-1-84655-377-6^{[citation needed]}
• In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir (2012), ISBN 978-0-30790-769-1^{[citation needed]}
• Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer's Awakening (2016), ISBN 978-1-62097-240-3^{[citation needed]}
• Wrestling with the devil: A Prison Memoir (2018) ^[84]

Other nonfiction

• Education for a National Culture (1981)^[82]
• Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya (1983)^[82]
• Mother, Sing For Me (1986)^{[citation needed]}
• Writing against Neo-Colonialism (1986)^[82]
• Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), ISBN 978-0852555019
• Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (1993), ISBN 978-0852555309
• Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1996), Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-818390-9^[85]
• Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (2009), ISBN 978-0-465-00946-6^[86]
• Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (2012), ISBN 978-0231159517 Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing on JSTOR
• Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe (2016), ISBN 978-0857423139

Children's books

• Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus (translated by Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu, 1986)^{[citation needed]}
• Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief (translated by Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'i, 1988)^{[citation needed]}
• Njamba Nene's Pistol (Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene, 1990), ISBN 0-86543-081-0^{[citation needed]}
• The Upright Revolution, Or Why Humans Walk Upright, Seagull Press, 2019, ISBN 9780857426475^{[citation needed]}

• Biography

Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o was born in British-controlled Kenya under the Christian name James Ngugi. His family are members of the Gikuyu (or Agikuyu; or Kikuyu) people, Kenya’s largest ethnic tribe. Ngũgĩ’s early life was dominated by ethnic Kenya’s struggle against British colonialism. His family was integral to the Mau Mau freedom movement, which struggled to release Kenya from British control. As a result, British soldiers tortured his mother and murdered his deaf brother. A writer all his life, Ngũgĩ played a primary role in the development of English-language African literature. At 24 years old, he premiered a play that he authored for the African Writers Conference. At 26, he published his debut novel, Weep Not Child, which was the first English-language novel produced by an East African author. One year later, he published The River Between, in 1965. During this period, Ngũgĩ finished his Bachelor of Arts at Makerere University in Uganda and moved to England to earn his master’s degree at Leeds. However, his studies were waylaid as he put all his energy into writing and publishing his seminal work, A Grain of Wheat, in 1967. At this time, Ngũgĩ’s work and life became decidedly more political. He renounced the Christian religion as well as his Christian name, James, in favor of the Gikuyu name Wa Thiong’o. He left his graduate studies in England and returned to Kenya, where he worked as a university professor in Nairobi. Due to his political writing and Marxist views, the independent Kenyan government imprisoned him in 1977. After releasing him from prison, the government exiled Ngũgĩ and his family from Kenya. He spent the next decades writing novels and essays and teaching at various elite universities in Europe and America. Ngũgĩ briefly revisited East Africa in 2004, but he never moved back to his homeland.   From LitCharts