Award-winning literature giant Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has died aged 87. Described as a titan of modern African literature, Ngũgĩ died in Atlanta. “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our dad, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, this Wednesday morning,” wrote his daughter Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ on Facebook. “He lived a full life, fought a good fight.” His son Mukoma Wa Ngũgĩ wrote on X. “I am me because of him in so many ways, as his child, scholar and writer. I love him – I am not sure what tomorrow will bring without him here. I think that is all I have to say for now.”
Ngũgĩ has won the Nobel Prize for Literature several times. His work spans roughly six decades, documenting the transformation of his country – Kenya – from a colonial subject to a democracy. Born, James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ in 1938, when Kenya was under British colonial rule. He grew up in the town of Limuru among a large family of low-income agricultural workers. Coming from a poor home, his parents saved to pay for his tuition at Alliance, a boarding school run by British missionaries. Ngũgĩ previously recalled returning home from Alliance at the end of the term to find his entire village had been razed by the colonial authorities. His family members were among the hundreds and thousands forced to live in detention camps during a crackdown on the Mau Mau, a movement of independence fighters. Ngũgĩ’s brother, Gitogo, was fatally shot in the back for refusing to comply with a British soldier’s command.
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In 1959, as the British struggled to maintain their grip on Kenya, Ngũgĩ left to study in Uganda. He enrolled at Makerere University. During a writers’ conference at Makerere, Ngũgĩ shared the manuscript for his debut novel with revered Nigerian author Chinua Achebe who forwarded the manuscript to his publisher in the UK, and the book, named Weep Not, Child, was released to critical acclaim in 1964. It was the first major English-language novel to be written by an East African.
Ngũgĩ followed up with two more popular novels, A Grain of Wheat and The River Between. In 1972, the UK’s Times newspaper said Ngũgĩ, then aged 33, was “accepted as one of Africa’s outstanding contemporary writers”.
