Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the African Literary Revolution

The tribute attempts to locate Ngugi as a major player within the African literary revolution. It draws attention to how writers like Ngugi used literary imagination to challenge colonial systems of thought, while offering decolonial alternatives and a powerful sense of newness, including the need to privilege writing in African languages. In a sense Ngugi was at the forefront of challenging the mythology of Englishness. For him, literature offered a platform for the critique of dominant ideologies. The tribute argues that Ngugi’s late career was, however, defined by exile and with it the challenge of writing about Africa away from Africa. In his last days, his writing wrestles with the idea of home – its politics and poetics.