Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (;Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:  born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938 – 28 May 2025) was a Kenyan author and academic. He was called "East Africa's leading novelist". 

Career
Ngũgĩ started writing in English, but later wrote mostly in Gikuyu. He wrote many novels, plays, short stories, and essays. His work were many different things. He wrote literary and social criticism, to children's books. He was the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright has been translated into 100 languages.

Ngũgĩ was a professor at the University of California, Irvine, Northwestern University, Yale University, and New York University. Ngũgĩ has often said to be a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.Evan Mwangi, "Despite the Criticism, Ngugi is 'Still Best Writer. AllAfrica, 8 November 2010.Page, Benedicte, "Kenyan author sweeps in as late favourite in Nobel prize for literature", The Guardian, 5 October 2010.Provost, Claire, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o: a major storyteller with a resonant development message", The Guardian, 6 October 2010. He won the 2001 International Nonino Prize in Italy. In 2016, he won the Park Kyong-ni Prize. His children are also popular authors, including Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.

In March 2021, his work, The Perfect Nine, became the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize, with Ngũgĩ becoming the first nominee as both the author and translator of the book.

Death
Ngũgĩ died on 28 May 2025 at a hospital in Buford, Georgia at the age of 87. At the time of his death, he was being treated for kidney failure.

 Awards and honours 
1963: The East Africa Novel Prize
1964: Unesco First Prize for his debut novel Weep Not Child, at the first World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, Senegal 
1973: The Lotus Prize for Literature, at Alma Atta, Khazakhistan
1992 (6 April): The Paul Robeson award for Artistic Excellence, Political Conscience and Integrity, in Philadelphia, U.S. 
1992 (October): honoured by New York University by being appointed to the Erich Maria Remarque Professorship in Languages to "acknowledge extraordinary scholarly achievement, strong leadership in the University Community and the Profession and significant contribution to our educational mission." 
1993: The Zora Neale Hurston-Paul Robeson Award, for artistic and scholarly achievement, awarded by the National Council for Black Studies, in Accra, Ghana 
1994 (October): The Gwendolyn Brooks Center Contributors Award for significant contribution to The Black Literary Arts 
1996: The Fonlon-Nichols Prize, New York, for Artistic Excellence and Human Rights 
2001: Nonino International Prize for Literature 
2002: Zimbabwe International Book Fair, "The Best Twelve African Books of the Twentieth Century."
2002 (July): Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCI.
2002 (October): Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Cabinet Awarded by the International Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzu Centre, Rimini, Italy.
2003 (May): Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
2003 (December): Honorary Life Membership of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA),
2004 (23–28 February): Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre.
2006: Wizard of the Crow is No. 3 on Time magazine's Top 10 Books of the Year (European edition)
2006: Wizard of the Crow is one of The Economists Best Books of the Year
2006: Wizard of the Crow is one of Salon.coms picks for Best Fiction of the year
2006: Wizard of the Crow is the winner of the Winter 2007 Read This! for Lit-Blog Co-Op; The Literary Saloon
2006: Wizard of the Crow highlighted in the Washington Post’s Favorite Books of the year.
2007: Wizard of the Crow - longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
2007: Wizard of the Crow - finalist on the NAACP Image Award for Fiction
2007: Wizard of the Crow - shortlisted for the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book – Africa.
2007: Wizard of the Crow - Gold medal winner in Fiction for the 2007 California Book Awards
2007: Wizard of the Crow - 2007 Aspen Prize for Literature
2007: Wizard of the Crow – finalist for the 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Black Literature
2008: Wizard of the Crow nominated for the 2008 IMPAC Dublin Award
2008 (2 April): Order of the Elder of Burning Spear (Kenya Medal – conferred by Kenya’s Ambassador to the United States in Los Angeles).
2008: (October, 24) Grinzane for Africa Award
2008: Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
2009: Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize"Ngugi Wa Thiong’o"  Booker Prize Foundation. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
2011: (17 February) Africa Channel Literary Achievement Award.
2012: National Book Critics Circle Award (finalist Autobiography) for In the House of the Interpreter
2012 (31 March): W.E.B. Du Bois Award, National Black Writer’s Conference, New York.
2013 (October): UCI Medal
2014: Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2014: Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature
2014 (16 November): Honoured at Archipelago Books' 10th anniversary gala in New York.
2016: Park Kyong-ni Prize
2016 (14 December): Sanaa Theatre Awards/Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of excellence in Kenyan Theatre, Kenya National Theatre.
2017: Los Angeles Review of Books/UCR Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award
2018: Grand Prix des mécènes of the GPLA 2018, for his entire body of work.Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, lauréat du Grand Prix des Mécènes / Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o awarded Grand Prix des mécènes: actualitte.com
2019: Premi Internacional de Catalunya Award for his Courageous work and Advocacy for African languages
2021: Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize for The Perfect Nine
2021: Elected a Royal Society of Literature International Writer
2022: PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature

Honorary degrees
Albright College, Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa, 1994 
University of Leeds, Honorary doctorate of Letters (LittD), 2004
Walter Sisulu University (formerly U. Transkei), South Africa, Honorary Degree, Doctor of Literature and Philosophy, July 2004. 
California State University, Dominguez Hills, Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, May 2005. 
Dillard University, New Orleans, Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, May 2005.  
University of Auckland, Honorary doctorate of Letters (LittD), 2005 
New York University, Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters, 15 May 2008
University of Dar es Salaam, Honorary doctorate in Literature, 2013
University of Bayreuth, Honorary doctorate (Dr. phil. h.c.), 2014
KCA University, Kenya, Honorary Doctorate degree of Human Letters (honoris causa) in Education, 27 November 2016 
Yale University, Honorary doctorate (D.Litt. h.c.), 2017
University of Edinburgh, Honorary doctorate (D.Litt.), 2019
Honorary PhD, Roskilde, Denmark

Publications
Novels

 Weep Not, Child (1964), 
 The River Between (1965), 
 A Grain of Wheat (1967, 1992), 
 Petals of Blood (1977), 
 Caitaani Mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross, 1980)
 Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986 (Matigari, translated into English by Wangui wa Goro, 1989), 
 Mũrogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow, 2006), 
 The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi (2020)

Short-story collections
 A Meeting in the Dark (1974)
 Secret Lives, and Other Stories (1976, 1992), 
 Minutes of Glory and Other Stories (2019)

Plays
 The Black Hermit (1963)
 This Time Tomorrow (three plays, including the title play, "The Rebels", "The Wound in the Heart" and "This Time Tomorrow") (1970)
 Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972), 
 The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976), , African Publishing Group,  (with Micere Githae Mugo and Njaka)
 Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want) (1977, 1982) (with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii)

Memoirs
 Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981)
 Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), 
 In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir (2012), 
 Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer's Awakening (2016), 
 Wrestling with the devil: A Prison Memoir (2018) 

Other non-fiction
 Education for a National Culture (1981)
 Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya (1983)
 Mother, Sing For Me (1986)
 Writing against Neo-Colonialism (1986)
 Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), 
 Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (1993), 
 Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1996), Oxford University Press, 1998, 
 Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (2009), Mwangi, Evan, "Queries over Ngugi's appeal to save African languages, culture", Daily Nation, Lifestyle Magazine, 13 June 2009.
 Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (2012),  Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing on JSTOR
 Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe (2016), 
 The Language of Languages (2023), ISBN 978-0183090979

Children's books
 Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus (translated by Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu, 1986)
 Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief (translated by Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'i, 1988)
 Njamba Nene's Pistol (Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene, 1990), 
 The Upright Revolution, Or Why Humans Walk Upright, Seagull Press, 2019, 

References

Further reading
Toh, Zorobi Philippe. “Linguistic Mystifications in Discourse: Case of Proverbs in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Matigari”. Imaginaire et représentations socioculturelles dans les proverbes africains, edited by Lèfara Silué and Paul Samsia, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2020, pp. 63–71.
Wise, Christopher. 1997. "Resurrecting the Devil: Notes on Ngũgĩ's Theory of the Oral-Aural African Novel." Research in African Literatures 28.1:134–140.

Other websites
Leonard Lopate, "Writing in Exile", 12 September 2006. Interview with Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo on The Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC, New York public radio, following publication of Wizard of the Crow.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – An Overview
Ngugi wa Thiong'o biography and booklist
The Language of Scholarship in Africa, 2012 lecture by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, published in Leeds African Studies Bulletin 74 (December 2012), pp. 42–47. 
James Currey, "Publishing Ngũgĩ", Leeds African Studies Bulletin 68 (May 2006), pp. 26–54.
Carey Baraka, "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: three days with a giant of African literature", The Guardian, 13 June 2023.

Category:1938 births
Category:2025 deaths
Category:African novelists
Category:Makerere University alumni
Category:Kenyan writers
Category:Kenyan activists
Category:Deaths from renal failure