A Grain of Wheat: Amazon.ca: Ngugi Wa Thiong'O, Ngugi W. Thiong'o: Books

Product Description

This is a compelling account of the turbulence that inflamed Kenya in the 1950s and its impact on people's lives. Five friends and agemates make different choices when the Mau Mau rebellion erupts in colonial Kenya. Kihika joins the freedom fighters in the forest; Gikonyo supports the rebels, but is arrested and detained; Mumbi, Gikonyo's wife, works to keep family and home together in the village; Karanja chooses to support the more powerful British masters; Mugo ultimately betrays his friends and loses his life in a desperate attempt to stay alive and stay neutral.

In this ambitious and densely worked novel, we begin to see early signs of Ngugi's increasing bitterness about the ways in which the politicians, not the fighters or their families, are the true benefactors of the rewards on independence.

About the Author

Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o is the author of WEEP NOT CHILD (1964), THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), and PETALS OF BLOOD (1977). Ngugi was chair of the Department of Literature at the University of Nairobi from 1972 to 1977. He left Kenya in 1982 and taught at various universities in the United States before he became professor of comparative literature and performance studies at New York University in 1992. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
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3 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Complex and interesting, but not overly stylistic or even beautifully written, Mar 18 2008

By

Benjamin Anderson (Fredericton, NB CAN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Grain of Wheat (Paperback)

Surely an important novel, but there was just something keeping it from becoming a masterpiece. The purposeful complexity and ambiguity is perfect, and the narration is cleverly done, but the writing is a little too unpolished for me, and I love unpolished books. There was obviously a bit of a language barrier for N'gugi and his editors as there are many misspellings and awkward sentences.
The characters were well constructed, the 'themes' were deep and the plot was intriguing, but it dragged near the end. A lot of the occurances within the novel could easily have been cut. I guess I'm reading too much Hemingway and expect everyone to use his 'iceberg' technique.

Regardless, a very good, but not great, book.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A revealing story, July 15 2005

By

Philip (Montana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Grain of Wheat (Paperback)

Centered on the pre-Independence Kenyan struggle between the Mau Mau liberation fighters and the British colonial government, A GRAIN OF WHEAT gives a portrayal of the struggle that few writers have ever depicted. One gets a good picture of the Mau Mau fighters, the attitude of the Colonialists, their the detention camps, the nature of the war, the bloody encounters, the ruthlessness of some of the soldiers of Colonial army and the direction to independence for the African continent. Betrayal, hopes and dreams, horrors and loss are all parts of the story.

Like TRIPLE AGENT DOUBLE CROSS, WHEN VICTIMS BECOME KILLERS, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST, we learn that the tragic nature of this story reveals the futility of conflicts which in the end produces no winners, because humanity loses when the majority of the people emerge from a war scarred for life, having lost the innocence that epitomizes the freedom of the soul.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling story w profound moral msg for all activists, July 16 2002

By

vcrs (Madison, WI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Grain of Wheat (Paperback)

I loved this book. The story itself is compelling, detailing both African and European characters' perspectives on Kenyans' struggle for independence from Britain. Just for the story alone, the book is an intriguing page-turner that completely satisfies. But beyond that, it has a powerful and inspirational moral message that I have taken with me and hope never to forget.

Each of the major characters commits an act of betrayal to attain a greater goal, whether it's the British officer who wants to create a happy, harmonious colony and finds himself torturing and murdering in pursuit of this vision, or whether it's the Kenyan rebel who betrays his comrade to save his own life, feeling that he must survive to perform important tasks for his people.

Each one chooses less-than-perfect means to an imagined end. But what we and they learn, is that the "end" never comes, and we are left living day-to-day in the rubble of our "means." The betrayals that crisscross the novel scar all the characters with heavy losses, representative of the losses and betrayals that scarred Kenya as it stood on the threshhold of independence, divided between those who had collaborated with British occupation and those who had rebelled. And yet the final note is one of hope, that somehow reconciliation and transcendence of past injuries can be attempted.

I took to heart two messages: that those of us who struggle for justice in today's world must never betray our own principles in pursuit of some supposed higher good--because we too will be left only with our betrayals and no higher good in sight. And, that even after betrayals and years of conflict, there is still a spark of hope for renewal.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Exodus from Africa
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, born into Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Gikuyu, in 1938, was educated at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and the University of Leeds. Read more

Published on April 17 2002 by Robert E. Olsen

5.0 out of 5 stars An even-handed, complex, masterful study of a revolution
A Grain of Wheat is a remarkable book, which manages to intertwine personal tragedies and joys with national ideologies and events quite effortlessly. Read more

Published on Jun 16 2001