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Irish Times
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Guth eile fós
Sa bhliain 2010 bhí an gnáthshioscadh agus cabaireacht ar siúl i measc an aosa litríochta maidir le cé a bhainfeadh Duais Nobel na Litríochta. Is fíor go bhfuil an duais áirithe sin ar an duais is lú meas de na duaiseanna Nobel ar fad seachas Duais Nobel na Síochána a n-áirítear buamadóirí breátha ar nós Henry Kissinger agus Barack Obama ar a bhfuaid. Bíodh gurbh é Mario Vargas Llosa breith an choiste rúnda a shocraíonn na nithe seo an bhliain sin, bhí plód d'iriseoirí agus de lucht faisin na nuachta ag feitheamh go mífhoighneach lasmuigh de theach Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, an scríbhneoir as oirthear na hAfraice arbh é rogha na ngeallghlacadóirí é ag an am, agus go ceann suim bhlianta ina dhiaidh sin. Is é is dóichí nárbh é an lipéad 'scríbhneoir ó oirthear na hAfraice' ná 'scríbhneoir Céineach' ab fhearr leis, ach scríbhneoir Kikuyu (mar a litrítear anois í). Óir, cé gur thosnaigh sé ag scríobh i mBéárla faoin ainm James Ngugi, dhiúltaigh sé dá ainm is dá theanga chéadfhoilsithe is gur chrom feasta a shaothar a scríobh ina theanga dhúchais, is í sin, sa Kikuyuís, teanga na Mau Mau. Ní móide go mbeadh aon bhreith aige ar dhuais Nobel na litríochta murach gur aistrigh sé agus gur aistríodh a chuid úrscéalta agus a chuid machnaimh go Béarla ina dhiaidh sin. Instear eachtra air nuair a bhí úrscéal aistrithe dá chuid i mBéarla á chur i láthair an phobail aige. Ní heol dom go baileach cén ceann é ach ceapaim gurb é Wizard of the Crow a bhí ann. READ MORE Fiafraíodh de ón urlár aníos cad ina thaobh nár scríobh sé sa Bhéarla sa chéad áit é. Thóg sé an t-aistriúchán Béarla ina ghlac agus dúirt sé 'Dá mbeadh an leabhar seo ann ar dtús, ní bheadh an leabhar seo (an bunleabhar Kikuyuíse) ann in aon chor.' Is é a dhála sin ag aon teanga eile é nach bhfuil istigh sa chlub, sa chumann, sa bhunaíocht uilechoiteann. Ní bhaineann cumhacht an domhain ar fad le réimeas míleata, le saighdiúirí ar an talamh, le buamaí á leagadh anuas, le ciníocha a bheith á ndíothú cé go bhfuil siad go dlúth agus i bhfogas dá chéile. Ní luafaí Ngugi wa Thiong'o in aon chor ná ar chor ar bith maidir leis an duais Nobel litríochta murach go raibh a shaothar foilsithe i dteanga fhorleathan dhomhanda; ní chloisfí giob ná gíocs faoi dá mba sa Khikuyís a bhreac sé gach rud riamh anall. Ní cúrsaí iontais é gurb é an Béarla an teanga is mó a shaothraigh daoine a bhain an duais amhrastúil seo, agus ina dhiaidh aniar, an Fhraincis, an Ghearmáinis, an Spáinnis, an Rúisis, teangacha mórchoncais agus díothú pobail iad go léir, ait le rá. Ait le rá chomh maith nár bronnadh duais mhór Oireachtais litríochta an domhain ach ar lucht cleite teangacha neamhEorpacha naoi n-uaire as 121 duais ar fad. Uair amháin don Araibis (491m cainteoirí), uair amháin don Bhengáilis (283m cainteoirí, ce gur scríobh Rabindrinath Tagore sa Bhéarla chomh maith), uair amháin sna teangacha Turcacha (200m cainteoirí, agus dhá thuras don teanga is mó cainteoirí ar domhan, an tSínis. Chuige seo, go bhfuair Ngugi wa Thiong'o bás an tseachtain cheana, ceithre scór agus ocht mbliana d'aois, duine de scríbhneoirí móra an domhain nach bhfuil aon insint mhór air toisc nach raibh sé cráite faoin existentialisme, ná faoi choinsias na buirgéiseachta, ná faoi óige lofa, faoi bhriseadh croí um leannán a thréig, faoi mhian bheag phearsanta nár comhlíonadh, faoi chiarsúr nár iarnáladh, nó faoi bhriosca a d'ith nó nár ith sé, ach gur scríobh sé go pearsanta paiseanta faoi éagóir na cumhachta. Ba leor sin le nach n-éistfí leis.
The Guardian
08-06-2025
- 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
The Wire
01-06-2025
- The Wire
How Ngugi wa Thiong'o Turned Away from English to the Language of His People to Write Great Literature
Rarely do fiction writers pay a price as heavy as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) did for writing. He lost his Nairobi University job, was imprisoned, spent many years in exile, was attacked and robbed, and his wife was sexually assaulted when he returned to Kenya on a visit. Tragedy and hardship were not new to Ngugi. When he was young, and Kenya was a British colony, one of his brothers was shot dead because, being deaf, he did not hear the English officer's command to stop. Ngugi had lived through the historic Mau Mau rebellion, during which his village, Limuru, was destroyed by British soldiers. His mother was arrested and spent three months in solitary confinement. All these experiences fed Ngugi's hatred for colonialism and imperialism, turned him towards Marxism and fueled his creativity. Turning adversity to advantage, Ngugi wrote his novel Devil on the Cross on rolls of toilet paper while in jail. Ngugi wa Thiongo's birth name was James Ngugi. In 1938, when he was born, Kenya was an English colony. By the time he changed his name around 1970, Kenya was a formally independent nation. But colonial legacies are sticky, stubborn and persistent. In 1977, after seventeen years of writing in English, Ngugi abandoned it and began writing in his native language, Gikuyu. This was hardly easy. English was the colonialists' language, but it was also an international language. Writing in English potentially gave access to a readership that was spread across the world. English also had the paraphernalia that enables circulation of literary works – publishing houses, journals and newspapers, university courses, etc. – that native languages such as Gikuyu lacked. Many languages of the colonial subjects did not even have a script. Also read: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: The Kenyan Icon Who Wrote For Freedom Till the Very End Ngugi went a step further. In his view, 'language was the most important vehicle through which [colonial] power fascinated and held the soul prisoner. The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.' This also had a class dimension. African literature written in European languages was 'the literature of the petty-bourgeoisie.' And while it was true that this class was far from homogeneous, ranging from agents of imperialism to nationalists or even socialists, and that the literature they produced did play a part in projecting a dignified image of Africa and Africans, the class roots of this literature yet constrained it. For Ngugi, there was no alternative. The language of the coloniser and the imperialist had to be abandoned. The language of his people – the masses of people, the peasantry and the working class – had to be embraced. But languages are not like shirts, you can't just toss one aside and wear another. 'Language, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture.' His first work in Gikuyu was a play, I Will Marry When I Want (in collaboration with Ngugi wa Mirii), followed by the novel Devil on the Cross , the musical play Mother Sing for Me , and several other works, including his 2006 opus, Wizard of the Crow . How the play came to be is a fascinating story. One day in 1976, a woman from Kamiriithu village came to Ngugi with a request: 'We hear you have a lot of education and that you write books. Why don't you give some of that education to the village?' There was a somewhat decrepit youth centre in the village, she said, and they wanted help to revive it. She visited Ngugi every week for the next month or so, till he relented. This is how he came to be associated with the Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre. At the centre, theatre was to be part of a larger cultural enterprise – the revival of pride in being Kenyan, in being African. Spreading literacy was one part of this revival. Theatre was the other. But they had no theatre – that is, an auditorium or playhouse. The peasants of Kamiriithu cleared an empty area and erected a stage, which was no more than a mud platform, and created makeshift seating for the audience. As Ngugi write later, 'Theatre is not a building. People make theatre. Their life is the very stuff of drama.' But what language do you use when making plays around the lives of ordinary, working people? Not a language that sounds foreign to the people, that is alien to their history. Ngugi, again: 'It was Kamiriithu which forced me to turn to Gikuyu and hence into what for me has amounted to 'an epistemological break' with my past.' The story of I Will Marry When I Want (original title: Ngaahika Ndeenda ) by Ngugi wa Thiongo and Ngugi wa Mirii revolves around the proletarianisation of the peasantry in a recently colonised country. In Ngugi's words, the play 'shows the way the Kiguunda family, a poor peasant family, which has to supplement their subsistence on their one and a half acres with the sale of their labour, is finally deprived of even the one and a half acres by a multinational consortium of Japanese and Euro-American industrialists and bankers aided by the native comprador landlords and businessmen.' If this sounds a bit like the 1952 Bimal Roy film Do Bigha Zameen , that's not because the two Ngugis had seen it, but because the experiences of ex-colonies were similar in many ways. Since the rehearsals of the play took place in the open, many villagers would sit around watching. In time, many of them knew the entire play by heart. They would bring their families and friends, and gradually, pretty much the entire village had seen the play before it opened. Many of them gave critical feedback and suggestions. Ngugi, used to the idea of a 'premiere' where a play is 'unveiled' in front of an admiring audience, wondered if anyone at all would come to watch when shows actually began. When the play opened on October 2, 1977, it was an immediate success. The villagers of Kamiriithu came, of course, but not so much as spectators as hosts. It was their play, and they had spread the word far and wide to other villages. The play became part of a spontaneous festival, a mela. One time, it rained so hard that the actors had to stop and the spectators had to take shelter. This happened three times. Yet, every time the play resumed, they found that no one from the audience had left. The play ran every day, drawing new and repeat audiences every day. It was a triumph. Till the Kenyan government banned any further performances of it on November 16, 1977. Ngugi was arrested on the last day of 1977 and spent the whole of the following year in a maximum security prison. Ngugi wa Thiong'o with the author, Sudhanva Deshpande. I met Ngugi in February 2018, and we spent several hours together in Kolkata and Delhi. I was invited by Seagull Books, his publisher, to engage him in a public conversation at the Victoria Memorial . I also interviewed him for Newsclick in Delhi. In these recorded interactions, I asked the questions and he answered. Off camera, though, it was the opposite. He was endlessly curious – about India (which he was visiting for the second time); about literature in various Indian languages; about India's relations with Pakistan; about the Indian Left movement and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in particular; about Jana Natya Manch, the theatre group I work with, and its founder Safdar Hashmi, who was murdered while performing; about how I came into theatre and became part of the communist movement; about my father, who was also a playwright; about the food we ate; and on and on. We interacted again, briefly, this time on email, when LeftWord Books published a set of essays called The East Was Read: Socialist Culture in the Third World , edited by Vijay Prashad. He wrote an essay on how the Soviet Union helped him when he was writing his novel Petals of Blood . The book has an essay by Deepa Bhasthi on her communist grandfather's library. Bhasthi recently won the International Booker Prize, for which Ngugi was also nominated a few years ago. In fact, he is the only person to have been nominated for a translation of his own work, and the only writer to have been nominated for a work in an African language. I asked Ngugi how on earth he wrote on toilet paper, which is so flimsy and highly absorbent. He laughed. 'Not the toilet paper they gave us in jail. It was hard and thick. It was meant to hurt our bums. I used it to hurt theirs.' As the world bids farewell to this giant of world literature, it is this spirit, indomitable and playfully subversive, that will continue to inspire. Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor and publisher. He is the author of 'Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi' (LeftWord Books 2020).
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘In his company you could not be lazy': remembering my friend Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Among the African writers who emerged in the middle of the 20th century, the most political undoubtedly was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Born in Kenya while it was still under British rule he was anti-colonialist, a communist, anti-dictatorial, and an almost militant proponent for African languages being used for African literature. His best works exist at the interface between the political and the personal. His first book of essays, Homecoming, is at once engaging and polemical. His early novels Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat look at the impact of colonialism and the Mau Mau rebellion on individual lives. He was strangely at his best with the personal and the intimate, but his reputation grew more from his political stances – first against the British government, then against the dictatorship in Kenya in the 70s. He was jailed not for a thundering political text but for a play in Kikuyu called I Will Marry When I Want. In prison he wrote his memoir on toilet paper. When I first met him I expected to meet a socialist firebrand but instead encountered a genial, engaging man who had read some of my writing and asked about my influences. I was genuinely surprised by his warmth, his humour and his friendliness. He was at ease with white as well as black people. He loved a good drink, enjoyed conversation and had a genuine love for literary small talk. I first knew him after his release from prison during his time in London. At the African Centre he would have a coterie of political acolytes and well wishers who wanted to ease his time in exile. I had conversations with him about literature. He was interested in my reading. I remember one particular conversation. At the time I had only published my first two novels and I was in my early 20s. 'What novels do you read?' he asked. 'All of you.' 'Who else?' 'Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.' 'Which Dostoevsky?' 'Crime and Punishment.' 'Did you read that before or after you wrote your second novel?' And I froze. The question made me aware of something that I had not considered before: the implied relationship between the greatness of the books you have read and the quality of the books you write after reading them. I suddenly felt ashamed that the novel I had written did not do that reading justice. Whatever answer I gave was a chastened one. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Ngũgĩ would paralyse you with an innocent-seeming question. They said Bertolt Brecht was like that too. In his gentle way Ngũgĩ compelled you to come up with cogent answers to the probing remarks he made about African literature and the question of language, a question of authenticity. In his company you could not be lazy. He also took an interest in my pool game and would often place bets on me in pubs in Covent Garden. Between frames we would talk about books. He had an almost mystical awe for what Achebe achieved in Things Fall Apart. Looking back to a time when the only literature being taught at universities was Dickens and Conrad et al, he made me feel how thrilling it was to read for the first time this novel that had found a language to express the yearning of Africans for their own story. By that time he had become a slightly portly figure with interrogative eyes and ready laughter. He tended to wear African tops and western trousers. One got the feeling with him that he had done a lot of his political thinking early but was open to the discoveries that his work led him into. He began his writing life as James Ngugi, and metamorphosed into Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He began writing in English and ended by writing in Kikuyu, often having to translate himself. His anti-capitalist stance didn't stop him becoming one of the most feted African writers in America. And in all of this, the one constant was that he remained a likable man without pretensions, and always with a feeling for the common people. Towards the end of his life, he became a perennial favourite to win the Nobel prize, and like Borges, had to endure the rise and fall of expectation every October. Family tragedy also marred his later years. But perhaps my fondest memory is of sitting with him in a Cambridge college during a Callaloo conference. We began talking about music and literature and he surprised me by saying that he was learning to play the piano for the first time. He was then in his mid-70s. He talked about the wonder of going from being unable to play a note to being able, within a few months, to play some Mozart, Chopin and Bach. It was very affecting to hear this seasoned revolutionary take on a youthful glow as he talked about this new-won skill. There happened to be a piano in a corner of the hall, and we went over. To this day I can still see him with a light smile on his face as the Bach notes tinkled into the hall.
TimesLIVE
30-05-2025
- Politics
- TimesLIVE
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Kenyan author who reckoned with colonial legacy, dies at 87
Celebrated Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whose sharp criticisms of post-independence elites led to his jailing and two decade in exile, has died at the age of 87, Kenya's president said. Shaped by an adolescence where he witnessed the armed Mau Mau struggle for independence from Britain, Thiong'o took aim in his writings at colonial rule and the Kenyan elites who inherited many of its privileges. He was arrested in December 1977 and detained for a year without charge in a maximum security prison after peasants and workers performed his play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want). Angered by the play's criticism of inequalities in Kenyan society, the authorities sent three truckloads of police to raze the theatre, Thiong'o later said. He went into exile in 1982 after he said he learnt of plans by president Daniel arap Moi's security services to arrest and kill him. He went on to become a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California-Irvine. Thiong'o ended his exile in 2004 after Moi left office after more than two decades in power marked by widespread arrests, killings and torture of political opponents. Kenya's President William Ruto paid tribute to Thiong'o after his death in the US after reports of a struggle with ill health in recent years. 'The towering giant of Kenyan letters has put down his pen for the final time,' Ruto said on his X account. 'Always courageous, he made an indelible impact on how we think about our independence, social justice and the uses and abuses of political and economic power.' Though Thiong'o said on returning to Kenya in 2004 that he bore no grudge against Moi, he told Reuters in an interview three years later that Kenyans should not forget the abuses of the era. 'The consequences of 22 years of dictatorship are going to be with us for a long time and I don't like to see us returning to that time,' he said. Thiong'o's best-known works included his debut novel Weep Not Child, which chronicled the Mau Mau struggle, and Devil on the Cross, which he wrote on toilet paper while in prison. In the 1980s, he abandoned English to write in his mother tongue Gikuyu, saying he was bidding farewell to the imported language of Kenya's former colonial master.
