Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Context
Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Context
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Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Context offers a compelling and comprehensive reading of the various contexts pivotal to Ngugi wa Thiong'o's practice as a writer. Ngugi drew a complex link between his role as a writer and the contexts within which his works are produced. The desire to come to terms with the past and the shifting historical process in his country is evident throughout his work. The volume shows that, for a writer whose work is steeped in biographical life experiences and historical events, context is even more special. It must be recovered through imagination and re-imagined as part of Ngugi's self-writing. One of the aims of this volume is to displace the notion of context as a reified site of retrieval and self-evident knowledge, and also to see how this sense of context offers readers of his vital writings new and disruptive ways of re-reading Ngugi's texts.
- An original approach that would allow Ngugi's works to be seen in fresh and unfamiliar ways
- Brings together, for the first time, a range of old and new voices from across the globe to shed light on what constitutes Ngugi's context
- Opens new possibilities of receiving written literature, way beyond the traditional conception of creative works as self-contained and inviolable artifacts which require no external referents to open up its many layers of meaning
Reviews & endorsements
‘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
Product details
- Published: June 2026
- Format: Adobe eBook Reader
- ISBN: 9781009524490
- Length: 0 pages
- Availability: Not yet published - available from June 2026
Table of Contents
- 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.
- Show more
- Table of contents navigation
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- Latest accessibility assessment date: 2026-04-30
