https://thekeep.eiu.edu/humanitiescenter_meaningfulwork0910/1002/thumbnail.jp

wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ

English

The Keep

Eastern Illinois University
The Keep
Meaningful Work 2009-2010 Events Archive
10-7-2009
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Follow this and additional works at: http://thekeep.eiu.edu/
humanitiescenter_meaningfulwork0910
This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Events Archive at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Meaningful Work
2009-2010 by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact tabruns@eiu.edu.
Recommended Citation
wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ, "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o" (2009). Meaningful Work 2009-2010. 2.
http://thekeep.eiu.edu/humanitiescenter_meaningfulwork0910/2
NGŨGĨ
WA THIONG’O
October 7, 2009, 7:00 pm
Lecture Hall
Doudna Fine Arts Center 
REVOLUTIONARY MAGIC: 
Selected Comments on the Wizard of the Crow
Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o “mounts a nuanced but 
caustic political and social satire of African corruption of 
African society with a touch of magical realism – or, 
perhaps, realistic magic, as the Wizard’s tricks hung on 
holding a not-so-enchanted mirror to his client’s hidden 
delusions. The result is a sometimes lurid, sometimes lyrical 
reflection on Africa’s dysfunctions – and its possibilities." 
STARRED REVIEW, Publishers Weekly, August, 2006. 
"In his crowded career and eventful life, Ngũgĩ has enacted, 
for all to see, the paradigmatic trials and quandaries of a 
contemporary African writer, caught in sometimes 
implacable political, social, racial, and linguistic currents 
…The tale is fantastic and didactic, told in broad strokes . . . 
its principal actors wear physical distortions like large, firelit 
masks." 
JOHN UPDIKE, The New Yorker, July 31, 2006. 
sponsored by the Humanities departments of the College of Arts and Humanities: Communication Studies, English, Foreign Languages, History, 
Journalism, and Philosophy; the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Diversity; the Deanʼs Office of the College of Arts and Humanities; 
EIU Honors College
part of the
NGŨGĨ WA THIONG'O, currently Distinguished 
Professor of English and Comparative Literature and 
Director of the International Center for Writing and 
Translation at the University of California, Irvine, was 
born in Kenya, in 1938. A many-sided intellectual, he 
is novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, 
academic and social activist.
The Kenya of his youth was a British settler colony 
(1895-1963). As an adolescent, he lived through the 
Mau Mau War of Independence (1952-1962), the 
central historical episode in the making of modern 
Kenya and a major theme in his early plays and novels. 
In 1967, Ngũgĩ became lecturer at the University of 
Nairobi and taught there until 1977, during which time 
his work set in motion a continental and global debate 
that later became the heart of postcolonial theories. 
The year 1977 forced dramatic turns. His novel, 
Petals of Blood, painted a harsh and unsparing 
picture of life in neo-colonial Kenya. His play, Ngaa-
hika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), was sharply 
critical of the inequalities and injustices of Kenyan 
society. Ngũgĩ was arrested and imprisoned without 
charge at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.  
After Amnesty International named him a Prisoner of 
Conscience, an international campaign secured his 
release a year later. However, he was forced into 
exile, first in Britain and then in the U.S. Ngũgĩ has 
continued to write prolifically, publishing, in 2006, his 
crowning achievement, Wizard of the Crow, an 
English translation of the Gikuyu language novel, 
Murogi wa Kagogo. His work has been translated into 
more than thirty languages. 


Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&amp;context=humanitiescenter_meaningfulwork0910

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

The Keep