By Tajudeen Balogun
African Literary icon, prolific writer, and classical novelist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, is dead.
The foremost African literary scholar, storyteller, and novelist who authored “Weep Not Child”, ” A Grain of Wheat” and “The River Between” among others, passed on at the age of 87.
His work spanned roughly six decades, primarily documenting the transformation of his country – Kenya – from a colonial subject to democratic land..
Ngũgĩ was tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature countless times, leaving fans dismayed each time the medal slipped through his fingers.
He will be remembered not only as a Nobel-worthy writer, but also as a fierce proponent of literature written in native African languages.
Ngũgĩ was born James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ in 1938, when Kenya was under British colonial rule. He grew up in the town of Limuru among a large family of low-income agricultural workers.
His parents scrimped and saved to pay for his tuition at Alliance, a boarding school run by British missionaries.
The Mau Mau uprising, which lasted from 1952 to 1960, touched Ngũgĩ’s life in numerous, and devastating ways.
In one of the most crushing experiences, Ngũgĩ’s brother, Gitogo, was fatally shot in the back for refusing to comply with a British soldier’s command. Gitogo had not heard the command because he was deaf.
During a writers’ conference at Makerere, Ngũgĩ shared the manuscript for his debut novel with a revered Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe.
Achebe forwarded the manuscript to his publisher in the UK, and the narrative, titled “Weep Not Child”, was released to a wide acclaim in 1964. It was the first major English-language novel to be written by an East African.
Ngũgĩ swiftly followed up with two more popular novels, “A Grain of Wheat” and “The River Between”.
In 1972, the UK’s Times newspaper said Ngũgĩ, then aged 33, was “accepted as one of Africa’s outstanding contemporary writers”.
The New Diplomat reports that Ngũgĩ works impacted deeply on literary community across the globe, students, scholars, researchers, academics, among others from generation to generation.
