He wanted to be a writer, but believes he’ll get his message across more easily through music.
Articles on Ngugi wa Thiong'o
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From the late 1950s a new generation of African writers challenged colonial systems and used their work to imagine a new world.
No African writer has as many major, lasting creative achievements in such a wide range of genres as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
At independence, adults were reading decolonial classics - but children were reading Enid Blyton. A generation of unsung women writers changed that.
Banned 45 years ago, and its author detained, the Gikuyu language play Ngaahika Ndeenda profoundly shaped the literary legend.
The Kenya that Njonjo sought to create was the ‘greatest living example of democracy, justice and peace’ – but there was no space for the poor.
Makeba, who would have turned 90 on 4 March 2022, was a hugely influential artist and an icon of African liberation and identity.
Gurnah’s novels delve deeply into family separation, endless betrayals of core familial relations, and the inexorable pull of the lost past.
There is something beautiful about African languages carrying science, fictionalised of course, into imagined futures.
A Kenyan film director sued her country’s film board and won. Local artists should follow suit and fight censorship.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o emerged with a new era in African history and led the charge to decolonise literature and academic thinking.
Top contributors
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Professor of Practice, Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC)
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Adjunct Professor, Richmond American International University
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Assistant Professor of African History and Africana Studies, Rhodes College
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Emerita Professor of English, Comparative Literature, African American and African Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Fordham University
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Ali Mazrui Professor of History & African Studies, University of Michigan
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Post-Doctoral Research Associate in History, University of Edinburgh
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Senior Lecturer, South African College of Music, University of Cape Town
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Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies, Penn State
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Professor of English and Chair of the English Department, Princeton University
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Associate Professor of Literatures in English, Cornell University
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Assistant Professor, Harvard University