The perfect nine
Subtitle: the epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi
By: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o ; translated from the Gĩkũyũ original by the author
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2020
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
ISBN-13: 9781620975268
Subjects: Kikuyu (African people); Social life and customs; Kikuyu (Peuple d'Afrique); Mœurs et coutumes
Work titles: Kenda mũiyũrũ
Description: A dazzling, genre-defying novel in verse from the author Delia Owens says "tackles the absurdities, injustices, and corruption of a continent" Ngigu wa Thiong'o's novels and memoirs have received glowing praise from the likes of President Barack Obama, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and NPR; he has been a finalist for the Man International Booker Prize and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; and his books have sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. In his first attempt at the epic form, Ngigu tells the story of the founding of the Gukiyi people of Kenya, from a strongly feminist perspective. A verse narrative, blending folklore, mythology, adventure, and allegory, The Perfect Nine chronicles the efforts the Gukiyi founders make to find partners for their ten beautiful daughters'called "The Perfect Nine" 'and the challenges they set for the 99 suitors who seek their hands in marriage. The epic has all the elements of adventure, with suspense, danger, humor, and sacrifice. Ngigu's epic is a quest for the beautiful as an ideal of living, as the motive force behind migrations of African peoples. He notes, "The epic came to me one night as a revelation of ideals of quest, courage, perseverance, unity, family; and the sense of the divine, in human struggles with nature and nurture."
Notes: Man Booker International Prize, Long List, 2021
Table of contents: title: Prologue; title: Supplication for power to the tongue; title: The perfect nine; title: The wind and the ostrich; title: Feast song and dance; title: Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi; title: Trials, falls, and triumphs; title: Mission to the mountain of the moon; title: The journey; title: The ogre and the cure-all hair; title: The ogre of endless darkness; title: The ogre that fumed fire and fury; title: The ogre that shat without stopping; title: The ogres with bags that never filled up; title: The hyena and the vulture; title: Ogres in white masks; title: The hair that cures all illnesses; title: Betrothal; title: Adoption and clan names; title: The first marriage; title: Warigia; title: Warigia and the lion; title: Cementing relations between in-laws; title: Epilogue: The will of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi.