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4.0 out of 5 stars
Exodus from Africa, April 17 2002
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. His "Weep Not, Child," published in 1964, was the first novel in English to be published by an East African author. "A Grain of Wheat," Ngugi's postcolonial novel of political, social, sexual, and religious struggle, death, and rebirth, was published in 1967, when he had begun working, first, as a reporter and, then, as a university professor. In December 1977, shortly before the death of Kenya's first president Jomo Kenyatta, vice president Daniel arap Moi, who would later rule Kenya with an iron hand, had Ngugi detained for a year as a political prisoner for what Moi regarded as the unsettling political message of Ngugi's popular play "I Will Marry When I Want". With the play, Ngugi turned his attention from Kenya's emergence from British occupation to the political corruption of independent Kenya. After his release from prison, Ngugi was unable to resume his university post. He left Kenya in 1982 and now publishes exclusively in his native Gikuyu, because he views the structure of the English language as containing a European, and hence foreign, vision of Africa. Ngugi is regarded as one of the leading African authors of the last half-century."A Grain of Wheat" is not realism in the Western style. It does not set out to tell one story from one character's point of view. It does not rely on finely drawn character development, interior monologue, dilemmas established early and worked out late, and the sort of rational choices which characters exercising free will make in Western fiction. Rather, it is fiction in a Marxist-Homeric style with Biblical overtones, told from many points of view, and crossed, perhaps, with an African oral tradition. In "A Grain of Wheat" birth is destiny, struggle is inevitable, the Lord disposes, and until the very end of the novel destiny is therefore imposed on each of the imperfect village characters, rolling over them, grinding them into an "earth smoked grey like freshly dropped cow-dung", reminding them of dogs tearing the limbs off a rabbit and running "with blood-covered pieces" in different directions. (215, 229) Kenya, Kenya's history since the late 19th century, and Kenya's emancipation from the Brits during the 1950s is the story of "A Grain of Wheat," and that story is told through the complex interactions of Kihika, a resistance leader; his beautiful, universally desired sister Mumbi; their friend Mugo, who wrestles with his conscience even as he is revered as a hero of the resistance; Kajanga, a quisling who becomes chief of their village and lusts after Mumbi; and Gikonyo, the husband of Mumbi, who, after seven years as a political prisoner, rejects his wife when her single flaw is exposed. Primal emotions fluctuate and move them. The changes of point of view are abrupt. The effect, kaleidoscopically, is to create a picture of an entire society in turmoil. It may be difficult for Westerners to bond with the central characters. Their actions may sometimes seem strange. There is no program to identify them and no roadmap for the gradually developing plot. But it is a wonderful tapestry Ngugi creates, the politics are provocative, and the unvarnished images of Africa roll off Ngugi's pen like the waves of a wine-dark sea. This book is well worth reading.
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by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
by Chinua Achebe
