Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Context

Professor James Ogude is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria and is the author of Ngugi's Novels and African History. He has edited nine books and his most recent edited volumes include, Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community (2019) and Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa: Poetics and politics of Extraction (2023).

'The originality of this volume is that the articles do not start from the texts of Ngugi's novels and plays but rather from the experience that made the writer, including the direct witnessing of national history, but also the local and familial context, and the intellectual influences. Centred on the man and the world that made him (a centre that moved as he did), the articles here bring a new perspective to the literary works. Critics of African literature too often assume we already know all that matters about the large-scale context of colonialism, postcolonialism and neocolonialism. But this volume, by examining how history touched the writer personally, at different ages and life stages, makes us understand all we thought we knew afresh, bringing valuable nuance, revelatory detail, and deeper understanding to the work of one of Africa's greatest writers, one whose creative response to the world, in turn, has inspired readers in many places to understand the world differently and to want to change it.' Neil ten Kortenaar, author of Debt, Law, Realism: Nigerian Authors Imagine the State at Independence

• List of contributors; Introduction: Ngugi in context: writer, activist and academic James Ogude; Part I. Early Childhood: 1. Ngũgĩ's peasant roots Gĩchingiri Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ; 2. Christianity and mission education Susan Kiguli. 3. Mau Mau war: emergency period and the rise of Kenyan nationalism Kimani Njogu; Part II. Colonialism: 4. Gikuyu culture and British colonialism Ndirangu Wachanga; 5. The writer and his past: history, power and reinvention in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Writing Rangarirayi Mapanzure; 6. Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat and the theatre of independence Ronit Frenkel; Part III. Independence and Its Fissures: 7. Nation formation and its fictions Tirop Peter Simatei; 8. Postcolonial edifice: neo-colonialism Grace A. Musila; 9. Revolutionising the literature curriculum at the University of East Africa: literature and the soul of the nation Carol Sicherman; Part IV. Intellectual Traditions: 10. Makerere University: liberal Englishness and the great tradition Okello Ogwang; 11. Ngugi and the African writers series James Currey; 12. Leeds University: encounter with 'Fanon' and 'Marx' James Ogude; Part V. Writers in Politics: 13. Ngugi's women: nationalism and gender politics Brendon Nicholls; 14. Kamĩrĩĩthũ theatre Gĩchingiri Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ; 15. Detention Isaac Ndlovu; 16. Ngugi's language politics and their impact on South Africa's transition Siphiwo Mahala; Part VI. Black Diaspora: The Ties That Bind Us: 17. The legacy of pan-Africanism Garnette Oluoch-Olunya; 18. The Place of Caribbean Literature in Ngugi's Imagination Godwin Siundu; Part VII. Literary Influences: 19. D.H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad Tom Michael Mboya; 20. The influence of George Lamming and Kamau Brathwaite Emilia Ilieva; 21. Ngugi and Bunyan: reading allegory as a vehicle for recuperating history James Ogude; 22. Agikuyu oral traditions: the case of Gakaara wa Wanjau Maina wa Mũtonya; 23. Ngugi's writing and its oral home Peter Amuka; Part VIII. Ngugi and Translation: 24. Ngugi and his critics Oliver Lovesey; 25 Translation and language: between orature and globalectics Timothy J. Reiss; Part IX. Globalectics: 26. Ngugi in the USA Timothy J. Reiss; 27. Twenty-first-century Ngugi Senayon Olaoluwa; Part X. Tributes: 28. 'I'm tired, mother. I have come a long way and I want to sleep': Ngugi wa Thiong'o (5 January 1938 to 28 May 2025) Ato Quayson; 29. Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the African literary revolution Simon Gikandi; Further reading; Index.