Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Abstract

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, previously known as James Ngugi, is one of East Africa's most celebrated literary figures. He started writing fiction, poetry, and drama as a student at Makerere University. A political detainee under the Kenyatta government, and a long‐time exile under the Moi regime, Ngugi has given practical meaning to the idea of “writers in politics,” an area of literary criticism that he has consistently articulated and written about. Ngugi is a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, and his teaching career spans three continents and close to 50 years. But Ngugi's commitment to unraveling human character and dissecting Africa's tortured journey through decolonization and the vagaries of political independence has been steadfast. Through fiction, literary theory, and cultural criticism he has challenged the mainstays of thought and practice and shown how political power works and how postcolonial identities might be understood.