Ngugi wa Thiong'o - Bibliography

Writer, born in Limuru, WC Kenya. He studied at Makerere and Leeds universities, and taught English at Nairobi University, where he became chairman of the department of literature (1972–7). His award-winning novel Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first novel in English by an East African. The theme of Kenya's struggle for independence is further explored in later novels, The River Between (1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967), and Petals of Blood (1977). He then gave up using English as the medium for his fiction (though continuing to use it for translation and other purposes), arguing that the continuing use of local languages (Kikuyu, in his case) was a prerequisite for political reform. He wrote several plays, notably The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1977), and co-wrote Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which led to his year-long detention without trial (1978). His ordeal is described in Detained (1981). In 1982 he went into self-imposed exile in London, and then took up residence in New York City, where he taught comparative literature. In 1996 he received the Fonlon-Nichols Award, given annually for excellence in African creative writing and contributions to the struggle for human rights and freedom of expression. He returned to Kenya in 2004 on a lecture tour, and was attacked and robbed in his Nairobi apartment.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. living in the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and since has also taught at New York University and University of California, Irvine, where he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Languages, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies.

He published his first novel, Weep Not, Child, in 1964, which he wrote while attending Leeds University in England.

His novel A Grain of Wheat marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism.

After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build and authentic African literature;

In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair.

On August 8, 2004, Ngũgĩ ended his exile to return to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa.

Since then, Ngũgĩ has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, "Wizard of the Crow," translated to English from Gĩkũyũ by the author.

Bibliography

The Black Hermit, 1963 (play) Weep Not, Child, 1964, Heinemann 1987, McMillan 2005, ISBN 1-4050-7331-4 The River Between, Heinemann 1965, Heinemann 1989, ISBN 0-435-90548-1 A Grain of Wheat, 1967 (1992) ISBN 0-14-118699-2 This Time Tomorrow (three plays, including the title play, "The Reels," and "The Wound in the Heart"), c. 1970 Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics, Heinemann 1972, ISBN 0-435-18580-2 Secret Lives, and Other Stories, 1976, Heinemann 1992 ISBN 0-435-90975-4 The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, 1976, ISBN 0-435-90191-5, African Publishing Group, ISBN 0-949932-45-0 (with Micere Githae Mugo) Ngaahika ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want), 1977 (play; with Ngugi wa Mirii), Heinemann Educational Books (1980) Petals of Blood, (1977) Penguin 2002, ISBN 0-14-118702-6 Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross), 1980 Writers in Politics: Essays, 1981 Education for a National Culture, 1981 Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary, 1981 Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya, 1983 Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, 1986 Mother, Sing For Me, 1986 Writing against Neo-Colonialism, 1986 Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus (Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu),1986 (children's book) Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986 Devil on the Cross (English translation of Caitaani mutharaba-Ini), Heinemann, 1987, ISBN 0-435-90844-8 Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief (Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'i), 1988 (children's book) Matigari,(translated into English by Wangui wa Goro), Heinemann 1989, Africa World Press 1994, ISBN 0-435-90546-5 Njamba Nene's Pistol (Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene), (children's book), 1990, Africa World Press, ISBN 0-86543-081-0 Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom, Heinemann, 1993, ISBN 0-435-08079-2 Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa, (The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1996), Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-818390-9 Mũrogi was Kagogo(Wizard of the Crow), 2004, East African Educational Publishers, ISBN 9966-25-162-6 Wizard of the Crow, 2006, Secker, ISBN 1-84655-034-3