Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngugi wa Thiong'o ( born January 5, 1938 in Kamiriithu, Limuru, Kenya) is a Kenyan writer and cultural theorist. He is considered one of the most important writers of East Africa and as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Ngugi as taught comparative literature scholars, among others, at Yale University, New York University and at the University of California, Irvine.

Life and work

Youth

Ngugi's family was captured because of the Mau Mau uprising, his step- brother died and his mother was tortured. When he visited the English Mission School Alliance High School in Kikuyu, he was a devout Christian. He then studied at Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Leeds in the UK. There he published in 1964 his first novel, Weep Not, Child.

Teaching activities

Ngugi has taught at the University of Nairobi in the Department of English at Yale University, at the University of Amherst, at New York University and is also a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine.

In pursuit of the writer

The author sees itself as an anti-colonial writers. Against this background, he has been published since 1978 in his native language (also called Gikuyu ) the Kikuyu. All works have been translated into English and many other languages. Popular made ​​him not only the enlightened subjects, but also its resistance against British colonial policy and the subsequent post-colonial rule of the government of Daniel arap Moi and his reference to traditional African theater and storytelling.

The play I will marry you whenever I want ( Ngaahika Ndeenda ) prompted the regime of President Jomo Kenyatta, to torture him in 1977 and to imprison him in Kamithi high- security prison in Nairobi without trial. His books and plays were banned by the Moi government. Only with difficulty he found the early 80s in England for political asylum. In 2004 he visited after the change of government to the " rainbow coalition " under President Mwai Kibaki Kenya for the first time, but traveled to a mysterious attack in his apartment on himself and his wife, who was raped back in the United States.

Culture Critical Essays

In his essay anthology Moving the Centre is a selection of lectures and articles that illustrate the fundamentally its postcolonial criticism and cultural studies theories.

Novels

His novel, Weep Not, Child, was published in 1964 and made him known worldwide.

It was followed by The River Between ( 1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967 ) and Petals of Blood ( 1977). Devil on the Cross ( 1980) he wrote during his imprisonment on toilet paper. It was his first novel in Gikuyu. The following two novels, Matigari (1986) and Wizard of the Crow (2006), were also first written in Gikuyu.

Works

  • The River Between, (novel), 1965. Translation: The river between. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1970.
  • Translation: The river between. Translated from English by Anita Jörges. Weismann Verlag, Munich 1984.
  • Translation: Price of truth. Novel. Translated from English by Klaus Schultz. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1971.
  • Translation: freedom with his head down. Novel. Translated from English by Klaus Schultz. Walter Verlag, Olten, Freiburg im Breisgau 1979.
  • Translation: Hidden fates. Short stories. Translated from English by Ruth Krenn. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1977.
  • Translation: Hidden fates. Narratives. Translated from English by Dagmar Heusler and Ruth Krenn. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982.
  • Translation: Land of flaming flowers. Novel. Translated from English by Josef Zimmering. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1980.
  • Translation: Burned flowers. Novel. Translated from English by Susanne Koehler. Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 1982
  • New edition. Burned blossoms, Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 2011 590 pp. ISBN 978-3-7795-0349-1
  • Translation: The crucified devil. Novel. Translated from English by Susanne Koehler. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988.
  • Translation: Cold posed. Prison diary. Translated from English by Susanne Koehler. Trickster Verlag, Munich 1991.
  • Translation: Matigari. Novel. Translated from English by Susanne Koehler. Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 1991.
  • Translation: Moving the center: essays on the liberation of African cultures. Translated from English by Jörg Rademacher. Restlessness Verlag, Münster, 1995.
  • Translation: Lord of the crows. Novel from the English by Thomas Brückner. A1 Verlag, Munich 2011 ISBN 978-3-940666-17-8.
  • Translation: Dreams in times of war. A childhood. Translated from English by Thomas Brückner. A1 Verlag, Munich 2010 ISBN 978-3-940666-15-4.
  • Translation: In the house of the guardian. Youth. Translated from English by Thomas Brückner. A1 Verlag, Munich, 2013, ISBN 978-3-940666-35-2.

Awards

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