The play that sent him to prison was performed by villagers in their own language. In 1977, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o co-wrote a play in Gikuyu with community members in Limuru, Kenya. The authorities shut it down, and at the end of that year he was detained without trial. He came out convinced that African writers should write in African languages.
Early life
Ngũgĩ was born in 1938 in Kenya’s Kiambu district. He grew up during British colonial rule and the Mau Mau uprising, which touched his own family. He studied at Makerere University in Uganda, one of the leading universities in East Africa, and later at the University of Leeds in England.
The novels
His first novel, Weep Not, Child, published in 1964, was one of the first English-language novels by an East African writer. It was followed by The River Between and A Grain of Wheat, which looked at the Mau Mau struggle and the betrayals of independence. He wrote under the name James Ngugi at first, before taking his Gikuyu name.
Prison
After the 1977 play, he was held for about a year without charge. In prison, he wrote a novel in Gikuyu. He was never tried, and after his release he could not return to his university job.
Decolonising the Mind
His book Decolonising the Mind, published in 1986, argued that colonialism worked through language and that African writers using European languages were still serving colonial ends. He announced it as his farewell to English as a language for his creative writing. It became one of the most influential and debated books in African literature.
Exile
Ngũgĩ went into exile in the early 1980s. He taught in the United States for many years, at universities including New York University and the University of California, Irvine. When he visited Kenya in 2004, he and his wife were attacked in their apartment, a traumatic return to his home country.
Nobel speculation
For years, Ngũgĩ was named as a favourite for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He never won it, which many readers consider one of the prize’s great omissions.
His death
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o died in Atlanta on 28 May 2025, aged 87. His family announced the news. Tributes described him as a giant of world literature.
Ngũgĩ asked a question every African writer still faces: who are you writing for, and in whose words? He answered it by going to prison and coming out writing in Gikuyu.
