Ngugi wa Thiong'o in context / edited by James Ogude

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Ogude, James, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, 1938-2025--Criticism and interpretation.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo.

Postcolonialism in literature.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, 1938-2025.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2026

Summary:

"Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Context offers a compelling and comprehensive reading of the various contexts pivotal to Ngugi wa Thiong'o's practice as a writer. Ngugi drew a complex link between his role as a writer and the contexts within which his works are produced. The desire to come to terms with the past and the shifting historical process in his country is evident throughout his work. The volume shows that, for a writer whose work is steeped in biographical life experiences and historical events, context is even more special. It must be recovered through imagination and re-imagined as part of Ngugi's self-writing. One of the aims of this volume is to displace the notion of context as a reified site of retrieval and self-evident knowledge, and also to see how this sense of context offers readers of his vital writings new and disruptive ways of re-reading Ngugi's texts"-- Cambridge Core

Contents:

Introduction : Ngugi in context : writer, activist and academic / James Ogude

Ngũgı̃'s peasant roots / Gı̃chingiri Ndı̃gı̃rı̃gı̃

Christianity and mission education / Susan Kiguli

Mau Mau war : emergency period and the rise of Kenyan nationalism / Kimani Njogu

Gikuyu culture and British colonialism / Ndirangu Wachanga

The writer and his past : history, power and reinvention in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s writing / Rangarirayi Mapanzure

Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat and the theatre of independence / Ronit Frenkel

Nation formation and its fictions / Tirop Peter Simatei

Postcolonial edifice : neo-colonialism / Grace A. Musila

Revolutionising the literature curriculum at the University of East Africa : literature and the soul of the nation / Carol Sicherman

Makerere University : liberal Englishness and the great tradition / Okello Ogwang

Ngugi and the African Writers Series / James Currey

Leeds University : encounter with ‘Fanon’ and ‘Marx’ / James Ogude

Ngugi’s women : nationalism and gender politics / Brendon Nicholls

Kamı̃rı̃ı̃thũ theatre / Gı̃chingiri Ndı̃gı̃rı̃gı̃

Detention / Isaac Ndlovu

Ngugi’s language politics and their impact on South Africa’s transition / Siphiwo Mahala

The legacy of Pan-Africanism / Garnette Oluoch-Olunya

The place of Caribbean literature in Ngugi’s imagination / Godwin Siundu

D. H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad / Tom Michael Mboya

The influence of George Lamming and Kamau Brathwaite / Emilia Ilieva

Ngugi and Bunyan : reading allegory as a vehicle for recuperating history / James Ogude

Agikuyu oral traditions : the case of Gakaara wa Wanjau / Maina wa Mu˜tonya

Ngugi’s writing and its oral home / Peter Amuka

Ngugi and his critics / Oliver Lovesey

Translation and language : between orature and globalectics / Timothy J. Reiss

Ngugi in the USA / Timothy J. Reiss

Twenty-first-century Ngugi / Senayon Olaoluwa

‘I’m tired, mother. I have come a long way and I want to sleep’ : Ngugi wa Thiong’o (5 January 1938 to 28 May 2025) / Ato Quayson

Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the African literary revolution / Simon Gikandi

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Cambridge Core, viewed June 4, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Ngugi wa Thiong'o in context

ISBN:

9781009524483

1009524488

9781009524490

1009524496

OCLC:

1591607501

Publisher Number:

CIPO000377148

CIPO000381715

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license