Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o dead at 87

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan writer and novelist who critiqued colonial rule as well as the post-colonial Kenyan government, died Wednesday in a hospital in Buford, Georgia. He was 87 years old.

His daughter, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, first announced the news in a Facebook post.

Ngũgĩ’s writing career began in 1964, with the novel Weep Not, Child. It was about a family living in colonial Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion, which fought back against British rule. The book became an important part of the African literary canon.

“If Africa is going to contribute something original to the world, this must be rooted not only in the experience but also in the possibilities inherent in their own languages,” he said. “We have been brought up to think of our many languages as something which is bad. And it’s the other way around. Monolingualism suffocates. It is a bad thing. Language contact is the oxygen of civilization.”

Ngũgĩ wrote Devil on the Cross while he was in prison. In 1977, he co-wrote a play in Gikuyu and produced it in a local theater in Kenya. And while he’d previously written work critical of the Kenyan government in English, it was this play that got him sent to a maximum security prison, though he was never charged.

“In reality, because of language, what happens is that the messenger who is sent by the community to go and fetch knowledge from wherever they can get it becomes a prisoner,” Ngũgĩ said. He never returns, so to speak, metaphorically because he stays within the language of his captivity.”

“The beauty about the Nobel of the heart is it’s very democratic,” he said. “It’s available to every writer.”