Ngugi wa Thiong'o

A new collection of literary criticism and brilliant insights from one of the giants of contemporary thinking. Who owns language? In Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas, Ngugi wa Thiong'o presents a series of essays that build on his vast wealth of work on language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. Intricate, nuanced, and accessible, it...

Science has given us several explanations for how humans evolved from walking on four limbs to two feet. None, however, is as riveting as what master storyteller Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o offers in The Upright Revolution. Blending myth and folklore with an acute insight into the human psyche and politics, Wa Thiong’o conjures up a fantastic fable about how and why...

Relish a brief encounter with Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Africa's foremost voice of resistance, in this fierce collection of stories about defiance, sacrifice, and survival. Ngugi wa Thiong'o's stories of rebellion and sacrifice, where ordinary lives burn with extraordinary courage. In these tales of rebellion and sacrifice, ordinary lives burn with extraordinary courage. From fighters taking up arms against colonial rule...

Originally published in 1967, Ngugi's third novel is his best known and most ambitious work. A Grain of Wheat portrays several characters in a village whose intertwined lives are transformed by the 1952-1960 Emergency in Kenya. As the action follows the village's arrangements for Uhuru (independence) Day, this is a novel of stories within stories, a narrative interwoven with myth...