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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o obituary
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who has died aged 87, was long regarded as east Africa's most eminent writer and, along with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, a founding father of African literature in English. Like Achebe, his novels showed the social, psychological and economic impact of the colonial encounter in Africa, as well as the disillusion that followed independence. In later years Ngũgĩ championed writing in African languages and published fiction, drama and poetry in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. His first novel, Weep Not Child (1964), told the story of brothers who respond in different ways to the struggle in the 1950s for independence from British rule by the Land and Freedom Army (also known as the Mau Mau) in his native Kenya, and depicted the brutality of the British in their attempts to quell the rebellion. After Ngũgĩ showed the manuscript to Achebe at an African writers' conference in Makere, Uganda, in 1962, Achebe secured its publication (under the name James Ngũgĩ) in the Heinemann African Writers series. It was awarded Unesco's first prize at the World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal in 1966. Thereafter, many more of Ngũgĩ's novels and short stories were published in that series. A Grain of Wheat (1967), considered by some critics his best work of fiction, is set during celebrations for Kenya's independence day and deals with issues of single-minded heroism and betrayal, as well as the sufferings of detainees and women during the struggle for freedom. An earlier novel, The River Between (1965), featured an unhappy romance and divisions between Christians and non-Christians. It was written while Ngũgĩ was studying for a master's degree in the UK, at the University of Leeds. Ngũgĩ also wrote plays, including The Black Hermit (1962), which dramatises a conflict between the desire to stay with the traditional world of a rural village and the wish to benefit from modern improvements and wealth, and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written in 1976 with Micere Githae Mugo, focusing on the deeds and aims of a leader of the Mau Mau. Appointed professor of English literature and fellow of creative writing at the University of Nairobi in 1967, Ngũgĩ argued successfully for the re-formation of the department to place African literatures, including oral literatures and writing in African languages, at its centre. At this time he changed his name from James Thiong'o Ngũgĩ to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He also published a series of influential essays gathered later in Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972). Increasingly alienated by the corruption and authoritarian policies that characterised Kenya's government under Jomo Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, Ngũgĩ was influenced in his later writing by Frantz Fanon and Marxist ideology. Petals of Blood (1977), the last of his novels composed in English, was completed while he stayed in Yalta in Crimea, as a guest of the Soviet Union. Its central character, Wanja, a barmaid and prostitute, becomes a symbol of Kenya and the capitalist exploitation of labour, raped and damaged by corrupt businessmen and politicians. In the same year that Petals of Blood was published, Ngũgĩ became involved in creating community theatre along the lines advocated by Fanon. Together with the Kenyan playwright Ngũgĩ wa Mirii he composed a play in Gikuyu, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which included members of village audiences as actors and vocal responders. Its success, allied to its outspoken criticism of the Kenyan establishment, led to Ngũgĩ's arrest in 1977. He was detained in Kamiti maximum security prison in Nairobi for almost a year, until released partly through the intervention of Amnesty International. Finding that he had been stripped of his professorship and facing threats to his family, he left Kenya for Britain in 1982. While in prison Ngũgĩ had used sheets of toilet paper to write Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (The Devil on the Cross), his first novel in Gikuyu. Drawing on styles and forms reminiscent of traditional ballad singers, the novel mingles fantasy and realism to satirise wealthy Kenyans who exploit the poor. In Britain between 1982 and 1985 he worked with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya and was writer-in-residence for the London borough of Islington. He was also in demand as a speaker at conferences promoting the reading and study of African and other Commonwealth literatures, often explaining his conviction that African and other indigenous writers should cease writing fiction in English, 'the language of the oppressor'. His arguments were later published in several collections of essays, including Barrel of a Pen (1982) and Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986). Born in the village of Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kenya, Ngũgĩ was the son of Ngũgĩ wa Ndūcū, a landowner, and his third wife, Wanjiku, in a family consisting of four wives and 28 children. After primary education in the village school he was sent as a boarder to the Alliance high school near Nairobi. There students were made to speak in English only, and beaten if caught speaking Gikuyu or other indigenous languages. On his return home after his first term, he found that his village had been razed by British forces opposing the Mau Mau insurrection. His family were divided in their attitudes to the Mau Mau; some members opposed it, and one became an informer to the British government, while a half-brother joined the movement, another was detained, and a third, who was deaf, was shot in the back when he failed to stop in response to a command he did not hear. His mother had been detained and also abused. Ngũgĩ went on to complete a degree in English at Makerere University College in Uganda in 1963, and in 1964 won a scholarship to Leeds. That same year he married his first wife, Nyambura, a teacher, farmer and small trader. He taught English and African literatures at the University of Nairobi from 1967 to 1977, while also serving as a fellow in creative writing at Makerere University. Following his release from detention in December 1978 and subsequent move to the UK, he remained an exile from Kenya. His one attempt to return, in 2004, resulted in a brutal robbery and a sexual assault on his second wife, Njeeri, an incident that Ngũgĩ strongly suspected was encouraged by people close to the government. While teaching in the UK and the US, Ngũgĩ wrote several memoirs, including Detained: a Writer's Prison Diary (1982, updated as Wrestling With the Devil, 2018), Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer's Awakening (2016). He also continued to write fiction in Gikuyu. His verse epic retelling the Gikuyu myth of origin, Kenda Mũiyũru: Rũgano rwa Gĩkũyũ na Mũmbi (2019), translated by Ngũgĩ as The Perfect Nine, was the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker prize. He was the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees across the world, and was often seen as a leading candidate for the Nobel prize for literature; so much so that in 2010 many reporters gathered outside his home on the day of its announcement. When it became clear that the award had gone to Mario Vargas Llosa, Ngũgĩ seemed much less disappointed than the reporters, whom he had to console. Having separated from Nyambura, who did not accompany him into exile, Ngũgĩ married Njeeri, a counsellor and therapist at the University of California, in 1992; they separated in 2023. He is survived by 10 children and seven grandchildren. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (James Thiong'o Ngũgĩ), writer and activist, born 5 January 1938; died 28 May 2025
Mail & Guardian
29-05-2025
- General
- Mail & Guardian
Writing against the grain: Adekeye Adebajo's Africa
Africa has always been marked by difference, globally, and this difference always bears negativity,and tends to perpetuate stereotypes. What Adekeye Adebajo's recent work The Splendid Tapestry of African Life: Essays on a Resilient Continent, Its Diaspora, and the World, counts for is to challenge and make that difference a positive appeal to the continent. The book is a collection of essays penned over a period of three decades, covering most compelling issues, debates and developments across the continent. It is the outcome of Adebajo's intellectual engagement which evolved and established a comprehensive and grounded critique, thoughts and reviews over the time. The collection is broken into 10 chapters, with 36 essays in total. The titles of essays are full of echoes and implications that bring a global kind of rendering to the issues explored. Among the names invoked throughout the book are William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Pliny the Elder, Ali Mazrui, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Chinua Achebe — to name just a few. Even the title of the book resonates with Nigerian novelist, poet and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka's latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, where he laments the decay of beauties spoiled by the politics of corruption in his country. The title of the book also suggests a striking contrast with the issues covered, or more deeply, a politics of difference, which comes to mind when dealing with Africa. This contrast is summed up as follows: Africa we believe versus Africa we think. For the problematic arises out of difference, challenges and analysis. The truth that Adebajo brings into life is not something new, it is something embedded in Africa, which is not and/or cannot be seen from outside the continent. Nigerian poet and scholar Harry Garuba once said that the truth lies at the heart of an unexplored part of Africa that is not yet covered by the Western discourse, namely Afro-pessimism and Afro-romanticism. I believe Adebajo's attempt in this extensive study is to tap into that unexplored medium of the African domain. He aptly challenges the prevailing eurocentric and discursive representations of Africa foregrounded in the mainstream media, as well as the Western military and political interventions across the continent. For instance, calling France a myth of 'Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité', he calls into question the country's sustained hegemonic power in the francophone countries, saying, 'France continued to apply democracy inconsistently, sanctioning sham elections in Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Gabon, Niger and Togo between 1992 and 1996, and resuming aid to fraudulent, undemocratic regimes.' He adds, 'France's intervention on the continent has thus become a costly relic of a bygone age of imperial delusion.' The book covers a diverse range of issues, problems and themes around Africa including pan-Africanism; slavery; colonialism; reparations; foreign policy; governance; decolonisation; peacekeeping; Africa and Western relations; terrorism and Cold War problems on the continent, as well as cultural issues. In 586 pages, Adebajo deals with a multitude of issues besetting and underrating Africa. The Splendid Tapestry is informative and illuminating, providing an insightful, critical and deconstructive approach to global issues over Africa. Regarding reparations, for Adebajo, one of the most significant recent developments is the agreement by Germany to pay Namibia €1.1 billion in compensation, which was followed by the Netherlands' apology for Dutch slavery, globally. He asks: 'Will the more egregious abusers of France, Britain, Belgium, Portugal and Italy follow suit and start to atone for their historical crimes against humanity?' The way Adebajo tackles problems is strategic and optimistic. Bringing African leaders, thinkers, scholars such as Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Kwame Nkrumah, Ruth First, Wole Soyinka, Ali Mazrui and many others into his pan-Africanist perspective, he establishes Africa as a global actor through interactions, encounters and engagement on the global scene. He sees Africa as moving, glittering and shining: 'Africa. A breath-taking continent of spectacular beauty conjures up extreme images of paradisiacal Eden as the birthplace of humankind and, in contrast, a conflict-ridden, disease-afflicted 'Dark Continent' that offers a glimpse of apocalyptic Armageddon. 'But Africa is a resilient continent that, despite continuing challenges, is currently on the move in the areas of economic development, conflict resolution, and democratic governance.' Though the bulk of the book takes a strategic and critical view over the African political landscape, considerable parts are dedicated to cinema, sports and cityscapes. One of the striking points he makes about Nollywood is important to note. He locates Nollywood at the heart of Africa because of its Nigerian location. He maintains: 'Nollywood has unquestioningly become one of the few true representations of 'global Africa'.' What strikes me most is to read about African cities in the writer's imagination. Adebajo provides astonishing pieces of cities, profoundly lived experiences of Lagos, Abuja, Accra, Abidjan, Johannesburg and Laayoune.
New York Times
29-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Writer Who Condemned Colonists and Elites, Dies at 87
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a groundbreaking novelist, playwright and memoirist whose writings explored the iniquities and ambiguities of colonialism in his native Kenya as much as the misdoings of the postcolonial elite, and who led a passionate campaign for African authors to eschew the languages of foreign occupiers, died on Wednesday in a hospital in Buford, Ga. He was 87. His son Nducu confirmed the death. Often tipped as a potential Nobel laureate, Mr. Ngugi (pronounced GOO-ghee) spent many years in exile to avoid the wrath of a government he criticized. For several decades, he taught comparative literature and English as a professor at the University of California, Irvine. His work inspired successive generations of African writers along with contemporaries such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, both of Nigeria. His canon drew enthusiastic praise, including for his debut novel, 'Weep Not, Child,' in 1964. It is the story of Kenyan brothers whose family must confront the challenges of the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule. The book has been described as the first major novel in English by an East African author. By contrast, 'Devil on the Cross' in 1980, composed in his native tongue as 'Caitaani Mutharaba-Ini,' was regarded as the first modern novel in the Gikuyu language, spoken by the country's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu. The book, about thieves who vie for supremacy by stealing from the people, sent him on a career writing in his own language and subsequently translating his work into English. He wrote 'Devil on the Cross' on prison toilet paper while detained by Kenyan authorities for a year without trial because of a play he wrote. In a New York Times review in 2018, the writer Ariel Dorfman said the book was a 'narrative of the devilish temptations he faced and the ruses used to thwart his jailers as he sat writing night after night in his cell.' The novel 'shows Ngugi in full command of his craft,' Mr. Dorfman wrote. Mr. Ngugi's life and writing unfolded in lock step with the stirrings of emancipation in British-run East Africa. He lived in Uganda, which secured independence in 1962, and in Kenya both before and after its independence in 1963. It was a life freighted by the subtleties and shifts of a momentous era buffeted by what a British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, in 1960 called 'the wind of change.' While Mr. Ngugi was educated at Kenya's British-run Alliance High School — a prestigious institution designed to mold an African elite in the image of the colonizers — other members of his family were caught up in the Mau Mau uprising against those same outsiders. A brother became a freedom fighter against the British, and another sibling was shot to death. When Mr. Ngugi returned home for the first time from Alliance, he found that his home settlement had been destroyed, its population herded into a so-called protected village set up by the British authorities to cement control of their colonial subjects. 'The hedge of ashy leaves that we planted looks the same, but beyond it our homestead is a rubble of burnt dry mud, splinters of wood, and grass,' he wrote in a memoir, 'In the House of the Interpreter,' published in 2012. 'My mother's hut and my brother's house on stilts have been razed to the ground. My home, from where I set out for Alliance three months ago, is no more.' But colonialism was only one part of his life's trajectory, much of it set against a backdrop of violence. The experience of detention persuaded him to seek exile in 1982, first in Britain and later in the United States. But on his return to Kenya in 2004, he and his family were the victims of a nightmarish attack. Intruders broke into an apartment where they were staying, attacked Mr. Ngugi and raped Njeeri, his wife. The episode was likely rooted in vengeance by his foes, but it also reflecting the criminality that had flourished during Kenya's corrupt independence. 'It wasn't a simple robbery,' Mr. Ngugi told The Guardian in 2006. 'It was political — whether by remnants of the old regime or part of the new state outside the main current. They hung around as though waiting for something, and the whole thing was meant to humiliate, if not eliminate, us.' Indeed, Mr. Ngugi's work was heavily intertwined with the politics of the era, and his thinking about the far-reaching impact of imperialism on African sensibilities played a central role in a much broader debate. In 1986, he published a collection of essays titled 'Decolonizing the Mind,' which traced what he depicted as a corrosive colonial intent to supplant Indigenous languages with the language of the occupier so as to seal the mental subjugation of the colonized. In 2023, Carey Baraka, a Kenyan writer who interviewed Mr. Ngugi for The Guardian, asked whether 'Kenyan English or Nigerian English' had become 'local languages.' Mr. Ngugi rejected the notion. 'It's like the enslaved being happy that theirs is a local version of enslavement,' he replied. 'English is not an African language. French is not. Spanish is not. Kenyan or Nigerian English is nonsense. That's an example of normalized abnormality. The colonized trying to claim the colonizer's language is the sign of the success of enslavement. It's very embarrassing.' Asked if there were such a thing as a 'good colonialist,' he disputed the notion. 'It doesn't matter if you're carrying a gun or a Bible, you are still a colonialist,' he said in the interview. 'Of course I'd rather face the colonialist with the Bible than the one with the gun, but in the end, both the Bible carrier and the gun carrier are espousing the same thing.' Mr. Ngugi was born on Jan. 5, 1938, in the Limuru district, north of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, then under British colonial rule. He grew up in a large, rural family, the son of a polygamous father and his third of four wives, Wanjiku wa Ngugi, who encouraged him to seek a good education. During his early years, Kenya became convulsed by an uprising against colonialism that the British authorities labeled the Mau Mau revolt. Mr. Ngugi said the name was a misnomer designed to minimize and distract from the rebellion's aims of securing land and freedom for the Kenyan people. The rebels' true name, he said, was the Land and Freedom Army. Like many Kenyan families, his had an ambiguous relationship with the guerrillas fighting British rule. An elder brother, Good Wallace, was a freedom fighter. Another, Kabae, sided with the British, and a third, Tumbo, was a police informant — an activity that inspired 'Grain of Wheat,' Mr. Ngugi's third novel. Another brother, Gitogo, was shot to death in the back by British forces after failing to halt when ordered to because he was deaf. In 1964, he married his first wife, Nyambura. In 2024, one of their sons, Mukoma wa Thiongo, accused his father of abusing and marginalizing her, writing on the social media platform X that she would seek refuge at his grandmother's house. The accusation sparked discussions across literary, cultural and social spheres on whether it was appropriate. Of his 10 children, four are published authors: Tee Ngugi, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Nducu wa Ngugi and Wanjiku wa Ngugi. They survive him, as do his other children, Kĩmunya, Ngina, Njoki, Bjorn, Mumbi and Thiong'o K., as well as seven grandchildren. After his studies at the Alliance, Mr. Ngugi won a place at Makerere University in neighboring Uganda, which at that time was a cultural and intellectual hub of the emerging Africa of independent nations. It was at Makarere that his emergence as a writer began. He recorded this period of his life in a memoir, 'Birth of a Dream Weaver,' in 2016. In a review in The New York Times, Michela Wrong, a British writer, said the book showed Mr. Ngugi finding 'his creative voice just as a continent is finding its freedom.' 'The convictions he forms,' she wrote, 'will last a lifetime: the quest for African dignity and self-realization, a rejection of Western hegemony, a passionate call for Africans to tell their own story in their own Indigenous languages.' Some of those perceptions underpinned his works, including the acclaimed 'Petals of Blood' of 1977, which cast a searing light over the postcolonial era. Mr. Ngugi went by his Western baptismal name, James Ngugi, until after the publication of 'A Grain of Wheat' in 1967. By 1970 he had adopted the name Ngugi wa Thiong'o as an expression of his African heritage and identity, in line with his decision to write only in his native language. He translated most of his work from Gikuyu into English, reaching a much broader audience. His decision to write in Gikuyu determined much of his subsequent output. In 1977, he was a co-author (with Ngugi wa Mirii) of 'Ngaahika Ndeenda,' a drama in Gikuyu with the English title 'I Will Marry When I Want.' It was produced in an open-air people's theater with ordinary Kenyans acting the parts. For six weeks the play had a successful run, but then the authorities chose to demolish the theater and send the author to prison without a trial. That was the beginning of the year in which Mr. Ngugi composed 'Devil on the Cross' on toilet paper. His incarceration also produced a prison diary, published in 1980 under the title 'Detained,' which further cemented his credentials as a writer and an activist seeking to expand Africa's sense of its own freedom. After his release and voyage into exile, he was a rare visitor to Kenya as his global reputation flourished. With 'Wizard of the Crow,' published in English in 2006 and set in a fictional African land called Aburiria, Jeff Turrentine said in a review in The Times, Mr. Ngugi 'has flown over the entire African continent and sniffed out all of the foul stenches rising high into the air.' But 'from that altitude he can also see a more hopeful sign: large masses of people coming together, sharing triumphant stories and casting spells.'
Mail & Guardian
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
The contrapuntal voice of Africa, Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, has died
Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, regarded as the pioneer of postcolonial studies in Africa, never ceased to be a voice of the continent. Photo: Michael Runkel/Robert Harding Heritage/AFP Modern African discourse did not develop in a vacuum. It developed in a context of contestation. Every African thinker had Europe in the background — West, colonialism, Hegel — a whole European archive of discourse about Africa. When African writers, especially those who were born and subjected to colonialism, try to represent themselves, they have to navigate the pre-existing categories, archive and philosophical and anthropological texts. So, Léopold Sédar Senghor, writing on Negritude, was in contestation and conversation with the whole tradition of Enlightenment Thought. Chinua Achebe, writing about African culture or writing about the image of Africa or Conrad, was in contestation with ideas of Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness . Ngugi speaking, about the debate on African language, he is in contestation and conversation with the whole history of denigration of African languages in colonial context. The intellectual formation of Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, 83, was no different from theirs. Like his peers and predecessors, he was born into, and grew up in the Christian dominated environment where he was trained to be a monk in his homeland, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He had been alienated through the colonising mission, which later helped him debunk the colonial system. Later he realises that Christianity is a 'cultural phenomenon that, in Africa, actualises the experience of conflict'. He studied classics in Congo, and did his doctorate in philosophy in Belgium. Mudimbe is widely regarded as a pioneer of postcolonial studies in Africa. Along with Edward Said, he established a strong hold against the Eurocentric and Western knowledge system. He never ceased to be a voice of Africa, paving the way for the African intellectuals to engage with their own culture while cleaning out built-up assumptions and debris from the gutters. Mudimbe's seminal work, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (1988), garnered significant scholarly attention and placed him alongside Said, whose work inspired subaltern studies. Both scholars are known for their critiques of Eurocentric discourses and the construction of the 'other'. Their work has had a lasting effect on various fields such as postcolonial studies, African studies and cultural studies. Mudimbe is preoccupied with the discourse of Africa, and he devoted most of his time to understanding the damages it caused to the continent. His task was not only to challenge the discourse, but to demonstrate and problematise its epistemic foundations. Most importantly, this discourse on Africa is marked by 'incompleteness and inherently biased assumptions'. This discourse of competence is completely based on textual production which is summed up in his own term 'colonial library'. To Mudimbe, the body of knowledge on Africa is invented by the colonial library and exemplified by primitivist anthropology. Through these primitivist strategies Africa had been denied access into world history or rational domain. 'Colonial Library' as a political project refers to the body of texts and epistemological order which construct Africa as the 'other' and inferior — even more than that, 'a primitive entity'. It is a discursive formation in which a set of representations and texts, thoughts, tropes, concepts, archives and images are foregrounded to generate and to invent Africa. The main objective of Mudimbe was to Africanise the knowledge system by debunking dichotomies promoted by Western formative discourse or Eurocentrism. His works seek to reconfigure the geography of discourse around Africa, challenging dominant Western narratives and promoting a more nuanced understanding of African identity. Mudimbe also writes about African images in the paintings and reception of African objects from 15th century to 19th century anthropology. He harshly critiques anthropological discourses for objectifying Africa and perpetuating negative stereotypes. He notes that African images in paintings and the reception of African objects were often distorted, associating Africans with 'savagery' and 'primitiveness'. The tendency was to assimilate the history of native people to a myth. Mudimbe identifies three stages in the restructuring of Africa as follows. 'Exploitation of land', where colonisers exploited Africa's natural resources; 'domestication of natives', where colonisers imposed their control over African populations; and 'integration of local economic histories', when colonisers integrated African economies into the Western perspective. Because this domesticating system is problematic and characterised by binary oppositions such as traditional versus. modern, oral versus written, agrarian versus urban. Mudimbe argues that these binary oppositions are misleading and that there is an intermediate space between African tradition and colonial modernity that characterises marginality. This space generates tension between modernity and tradition and is a product of the colonising structure. Though he borrows from Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean-Paul Sartre, Mudimbe is obsessed with discursive formations and most of his analysis tends to be discursive reading of narratives or ideas. He extensively draws on Michel Foucault's work. Even in his last book in English, The Scent of the Father, in which he follows psychoanalysis threads to trace the idea of the 'absent father' in Africa, he brings Foucault into the debate. He maintains: 'For Africa, to truly escape from the West presupposes an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from it; it presupposes knowing to what extent the West, perhaps insidiously, has drawn close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against the West, of all that remains Western; and a determination of the extent to which our recourse against it is still possibly one of the tricks it directs against us, while it waits for us, immobile and elsewhere.' Mudimbe warns us about tricky positions that should be taken to be situated on the verge of possessing knowledge. This is an epistemic dilemma all African scholars have to confront. Mudimbe's work highlights the need for an epistemological paradigm shift to create a new understanding of Africa. The question remains: how can African genesis be created without such a paradigm shift, despite individual efforts? Ahmet Sait Akcay is a literary critic and African Studies scholar, he is teaching at the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town.
Arab News
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: The Aesthetic Cold War by Peter J. Kalliney
How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In 'The Aesthetic Cold War,' Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers. In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean — such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Wole Soyinka — carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work.
