Ngũgĩ waxg’o – giant of African literature

Ngũgĩ waxg’o who died at the age of 87. He was a titan of contemporary African literature – a narrator who refused to be associated with prison, exile and illness.

His work has been covered by about six decades, first of all, documented the transformation of his country – Kenya – from the colonial, which is subject to democracy.

Ngũgĩ was tilted to win the Nobel Prize for Literature countless times, leaving fans who every time the medal slipped through his fingers.

He will be remembered not only as a writer Nobel, but also as a cruel fan of literature written in native African languages.

Ngũgĩ was born James Tiang’o NGGG in 1938, when Kenya was under British colonial control. It grew up in the city of limu among a large family of low -income agricultural workers.

His parents squeezed and rescued to pay for tuition in the alliance, the boarding school was conducted by British missionaries.

Y en interviewNgũgĩ reminded of returning home from the alliance at the end of the term to find the whole village, which colonial authorities were destroyed.

The members of his family were among hundreds and thousands forced to live in camps in the detention center during the repression on Mau -Mau, the movement of independence.

UpisingLasting from 1952 to 1960, he touched on the life of Ngũgĩ many, devastating ways.

In one of the most disguised, Ngũgĩ’s brother, Gitoga, was deadly shot in the back for refusing to execute the British soldier’s team.

The crew did not hear the team because it was deaf.

In 1959, when the British fought for the preservation of Kenya, NGGG left he studied in Uganda. He went to the University of Macker, which remains one of the most prestigious universities in Africa.

During the Writers’ Conference in Makerere, Ngũgĩ shared a manuscript for his debut novel with the Honorable Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.

The shed was sent to the manuscript of his publishing house in the UK, and the book called “Paep is not”, “The Child” was released into “Critical Recognition” in 1964. It was the first major English -language novel to write East African.

Ngũgĩ quickly followed two popular novels, wheat grain and river between them. In 1972, the newspaper in the UK Times stated that Ngũgĩ, then 33, was “accepted as one of the outstanding contemporary writers of Africa.”

Then came 1977 – a period that noted a huge change in life and career ngũgĩ. To begin with, it was the year when it became ngũgĩ wa thiong’o and shed its name, James. Ngũgĩ made changes because he wanted to call the colonial influence.

He also threw English as the main language for his literature and promised to write only in his native language.

In 1977, he published his latest English -speaking “Blood Petals”.

The previous books of the Ngũgĩ were critical of the colonial state, but blood petals attacked new leaders of independent Kenya, presenting them as an elite class that betrayed ordinary Kenyan.

Ngũgĩ did not stop there. In the same year, he wrote the play Ngaahika NDEENDA (I will marry if I wanted), which was a scorching view of Kenya’s class struggle.

His theatrical mileage was closed by the then President Joom Kenyat, and Ngũgĩ was recorded in the maximum security prison for a year without trial.

However, it was a fruitful 12 months – when NGGs wrote its first novel Kimi’s “Devil” on the cross while in prison. He said he used toilet paper to write the whole book because he had no access to the notebook.

Ngũgĩ was released after Daniel Moi replaced Mr. Kenyat as president.

Ngũgĩ said that in four years, being in London to launch the book, He learned that there is a plot to kill him Upon returning to Kenya.

Ngũgĩ began to impose an exile on his own in the UK and then the US. He did not return to Kenya for 22 years.

When he finally returned, he received a hero’s reception – thousands of Kenyans turned out to say hello.

But the return to his homeland was overshadowed when the attackers burst into the apartment of NGGG, brutally striking the author and raped his wife.

Ngugi Insist that the attack was “political”.

He returned to the United States, where he spent the professors at universities, including Yale, New York and California Irwin.

In academic circles and abroad, NGGG became known as one of the main fans of literature written in African.

Throughout the career – and to this day – in African literature, books written in English or French, official language in most countries on the continent prevailed.

“What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and writer who says Africa can’t do without European languages?” – asked ngũgĩ in a seminar, fiery collection of the essay called the decolonization of the mind.

In one section Ngũgĩ called on Chinua Achebe – the author who helped start his career – for writing in English. Their friendship as a result was broken.

In the distance from his literary career, NGGG was married – and divorced – twice. He had nine children, four of which were published by the authors.

“My own family became one of my literary rivals,” NGGs joked in 2020 La Times interview.

His son Mukomo in NGGG claimed that his mother was physically cruel to ngũgĩ waxg’o.

“Some of my earliest memories I’m going to visit her grandmother where she will seek asylum,” his son wrote in a social media report, to which the ngũgĩ waxg’o did not respond.

Later in her life, Ngũgĩ health deteriorated. In 2019, he had a triple surgery to pass heart and began to fight renal failure. In 1995, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was given three months for life.

However, Ngũgĩ added cancer to the long list of struggle he overcame.

But now one of the ruling African African literatures – like the Nigerian writer Chimamanda NGOZI ADICHII once called it – left, leaving the world of words a little darker.