Born James Ngugi on January 5, 1938, in Kamiriithu, near Limuru, Kiambu district of Kenya, he developed a reputation as a revolutionary Kenyan novelist, playwright, essayist and academic and one of the biggest shapers of African literature. He advocated for the African continent and his home country to free itself from Western cultural dominance.
Ngugi came of age during the Mau Mau War of Independence (1952-1962), which led to the end of British colonial rule.
After Ngugi’s time in the United Kingdom, he renounced Christianity and shed his Christian name, because he believed it was a sign of Anglo-American neocolonialism. He changed his name, which he regarded as a sign of colonial influence, to Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
He believed that like a flower, which is an expression of the entire plant, holding the seed of its future, art equally held the seed of the future Africa. His lyrical reflection of Africa’s dysfunction and possibilities was gripping.
By the age of 30, he had established a writing career, making literary history in the process. Since he was launched into literary consciousness in 1964 by the masterpiece, Weep Not Child, his craft grew over the years to become a writer of communal expression.
According to Ngugi: “Writers from marginalised cultures and languages had the duty and responsibility of making themselves visible in their languages…I made the decision way back in 1978 to break with English as the primary means of my writing, particularly in fiction and drama. I have no regrets. I still believe that writers and other intellectuals have the duty to challenge and shake up linguistic feudalism and linguistic Darwinism, that hierarchical view of languages in theory and practice.”
He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Uganda, at the Makerere University College, and a master’s degree in Leeds, England. It was at Leeds that he met the late Professor Ime Ikiddeh, who helped shape, his literary beliefs, and subsequently, the need to embrace the local languages, as a means of literary communication. He returned to Kenya in 1967, becoming a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Nairobi.
In 1967, while lecturing at the University of Nairobi’s English Department, he pushed for it to be replaced by a literature department that would cover not just English Literature, but also the new African and world literature.
Eventually, he became frustrated that the main audience for his criticisms was the English-speaking middle classes, rather than the poor peasants and workers he looked to for a change in the society.
In the 70s, he started writing in his mother tongue, Gikuyu, helping the peasants to produce the now-famous play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which he co-wrote with Ngugi wa Mirii.
His arrest and detention (without charge and in a maximum security prison) came only after he began to write in Gikuyu instead of English, thereby reaching a far greater number of ordinary Kenyans, a development that the authorities found threatening. While in detention, he wrote his first novel in Gikuyu, Devil on the cross, on toilet paper. He has written other novels in his mother tongue such as Matigari and Wizard of the Crow.
In 1977, Ngugi was imprisoned for a year, without trial. After an international campaign led by Amnesty International led to his release, the Moi Dictatorship banned him from taking jobs at the country’s colleges and universities. Ngugi’s works were also removed from all educational institutions. He was thus forced into exile in Britain (1982-1989) and then in the United States (1989-till death).
Ngugi questioned the gulf between African intellectuals and their audience and resolved to write in his own tongue, Gikuyu.
He said, “The death of any language is the loss of knowledge contained in that language. The weakening of any language is the weakening of its knowledge-producing potential. It is a human loss. Each language, no matter how small, contains the best knowledge of its immediate environment: the plants and their properties, for instance. Language is the primary computer with a natural hard drive.”
Ngugi’s novels have been translated into over 30 languages. He often translated his works into English himself. He has held on to the vision that literature written in African languages such as Luo or Yoruba would be translated directly into other African languages without using English as an intermediary.
“That would allow our languages to communicate directly with each other,” he reasoned.
His numerous works include The Black Hermit (play), Weep Not Child, The River Between, Grain of Wheat, This Time Tomorrow (three plays, including the title play), The Reels, and The Wound in the Heart.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o died on May 28, 2025, and will be sorely missed by the global literary community.
