For Mark, who introduced me to the riches of African literature.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O (b. 1938) is a Kenyan novelist, playwright, short story writer, and essayist. He is a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I have nothing against Louise Glück, the 2020 recipient, but when will the Swedish Academy ever get its act together?
His prizewinning WEEP NOT, CHILD (1964), was the first major novel in English to be published by an East African author. It is the story of a Kikuyu family drawn into the struggle for Kenyan independence during the state of emergency and the Mau Mau rebellion. A GRAIN OF WHEAT (1967), generally held to be artistically more mature, focuses on the many social, moral, and racial issues of the struggle for independence and its aftermath, and marked Ngugi's embrace of Fanonist Marxism. A third novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965) tells of lovers kept apart by the conflict between Christianity and traditional ways and beliefs and suggests that efforts to reunite a culturally divided community by means of Western education are doomed to failure.
A deceptively simple tale, PETALS OF BLOOD (1977) deals with the continued exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie following independence, and was so explosive that its author was imprisoned without charges by the Kenyan government. MATIGARI (1987), his first new novel in nearly two decades, is a satire based on a Kikuyu folktale. WIZARD OF THE CROW (2004), is a sweeping satire laced with magical realism and described by Ngugi as a "global epic from Africa."
Ngugi has presented his ideas on literature, culture, and politics in numerous essays and lectures, which were collected in HOMECOMING (1972), WRITERS IN POLITICS (1981), and MOVING THE CENTRE (1993), and earned him a reputation as one of Africa's most articulate social critics. In DECOLONISING THE MIND (1986), Ngugi argued for African-language literature as the only authentic voice for Africans and stated his own intention of writing only in Kikuyu or Kiswahili from that point on. SOMETHING TORN AND NEW (2009) traces the arc of Africa's fragmentation and restoration amidst the global history of colonialism and modernity. IN THE NAME OF THE MOTHER (2013) brings together a number of critical essays on modern African and Caribbean literature. The essays contain the germ of the approach that Ngugi theorized in GLOBALETICS (2012), where he confronts the politics of language in African writing; linguistic imperialism and literature's ability to resist it; the difficult balance between orality and writing; the tension between national and world literature; and the role of the literary curriculum in both reaffirming and undermining the dominance of the Western canon.
Ngugi's autobiographical work includes DETAINED, his prison diary (1981); DREAMS IN A TIME OF WAR (2010), a memoir of his childhood in Kenya; IN THE HOUSE OF THE INTERPRETER (2012), which hauntingly describes the formative experiences of a young man who would become a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass to us all; BIRTH OF A DREAM WEAVER (2016), recounting the four years he spent in Makerere University in Kampala — threshold years where he found his voice as a playwright, journalist, and novelist; and, most recently, WRESTLING WITH THE DEVIL (2018), his powerful prison memoir.
His most recent work, THE PERFECT NINE, published in October 2020, is a genre-defying novel in verse about the founding of Kenya's Gikuyu people and the ideals of beauty, courage and unity.
This is a revised and enlarged version of an earlier torrent. The following books are in PDF and/or ePUB format as indicated:
== NOVELS ==
* Devil on the Cross (Penguin Classics, 2017) — ePUB
* Grain of Wheat, A (Penguin Classics, 2002) — ePUB
* Matigari (Heinemann, 1990) — ePUB + PDF
* Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi (Vintage, 2020) — PDF + ePUB
* Petals of Blood (Penguin Classics, 2002) — ePUB
* Petals of Blood (Vintage Classics, 2018) — ePUB
* River Between, The (Heinemann, 1965 / Penguin, 2015) — ePUB + PDF
* Weep Not, Child (Collier, 1969). M. Tucker, intro. — PDF
* Weep Not, Child (Penguin Classics, 2012). B. Okri, intro. — ePUB
* Wizard of the Crow (Anchor, 2007) — ePUB
== SHORT STORIES ==
* Minutes of Glory and Other Stories (New Press, 2019) — ePUB
* Origin East Africa: A Makerere Anthology (Heinemann, 1965). D. Cook, ed. — PDF
* Secret Lives and Other Stories (Vintage Classics, 2018) — ePUB
== PLAYS ==
* I Will Marry When I Want (Heinemann, 1982) [with Ngugi wa Mirii] — PDF
* Trial of Dedan Kimathi, The [with Micere Githae Mugo] (Heinemann, 1989) — PDF
== MEMOIRS ==
* Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer's Awakening (New Press, 2016) — ePUB + PDF
* Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (Heinemann, 1981) — PDF
* Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir (Pantheon, 2010) — ePUB
* In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir (Pantheon, 2012) — ePUB
* Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir (New Press, 2018). — ePUB
== ESSAYS & OTHER NON-FICTION ==
* African Writers Talking (Africana, 1972). D. Duerden & C. Pieterse, ed. — PDF^
* Criticism and Ideology (SIAS, 1988). K. Holst Petersen, ed. — PDF
* Decolonising the Mind (Zimbabwe Publishing, 1986) — PDF^
* Genius of Language, The (Anchor, 2004). W. Lesser, ed.
* Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (Columbia UP, 2012) — ePUB
* Homecoming: Essays on African & Caribbean Literature (Heinemann, 1972) — PDF
* In the Name of the Mother (EAEP, 2013) — ePUB
* Moving the Centre: Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (James Currey, 1993) — PDF
* Ngũgĩ: Reflections on His Life of Writing (Currey, 2018). Gikandi et al, eds. — PDF
* Something Torn and New (Basic Civitas Books, 2009) — PDF + ePUB
* Writers in Politics: Essays (Heinemann, 1981) — PDF
PLEASE HELP TO SEED! If you like these books and want others to have access to them, please help to seed for as long as you can. The more you seed, the longer the torrent will live, and the easier it will be for me to upload new content. Thank you!
