News & Current Affairs
From Prison to Exile: The Life and Legacy of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the towering figure of African literature, left a profound legacy marked by resistance and reinvention. Born James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ, he rejected his colonial name in 1977. Then he chose to write exclusively in Kikuyu instead of English, which he viewed as a colonial tool. Several years later, Thiong’o’s writing began to criticize the elite of post-independence Kenya, leading to his persecution and, eventually, imprisonment without trial. Several years after his release, he learned of a plot to kill him and, thus, began a self-imposed exile in the UK and, later, the US. Thiong’o criticized Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author who helped launch his career, for writing in English, which fractured their friendship.
BBC
