Ngugi wa Thiong'o

A comprehensive study of all the works of Kenyan dramatist and novelist, Ngugu wa Thiong'o, first published in 2000.

Simon Gikandi (Author)

9780521480062, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 May 2000

342 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

"Gikandi has written a scholarly bokk on an important African writer that all serious scholars of Ngugi and of African literature will find indispensable...this book is the best so far on Ngugi wa Thiong'o...Gikandi's book is a first-rate work on Ngugi and his place in the African literary canon." World Literature Today Nov 2001

Kenyan dramatist and novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a hugely influential African writer respected not only for his creative work but also for his criticism of wider cultural issues - issues such as nation and narration, power and performance, language and identity, empire and postcoloniality. Simon Gikandi's study, first published in 2000, offers a comprehensive analysis of all Ngugi's published work and explores the development of the major novels and plays against a background of colonialism and decolonisation in Kenya. Gikandi places the works in a context that examines the way they engage with the changing history of Africa. Tracing Ngugi's career from the 1960s through to his role in shaping a radical culture in East Africa in the 1970s and his imprisonment and exile in the 1980s, this book provides fresh insight into the author's life and the historic events that produced his work.

Chronology
1. Introduction: reading texts and contexts
2. Narrative and nationalist desire: early short stories and The River Between
3. Educating colonial subjects: the 'Emergency' stories and Weep Not, Child
4. Representing decolonization: A Grain of Wheat
5. The poetics of cultural production: Petals of Blood
6. Performance and power: the plays
7. The prisonhouse of culture: Detained and Devil on the Cross
8. The work of art in exile: Matigari
9. Writing freedom: essays and criticism
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]