Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, literary giant and cultural revolutionary, died on 28 May, 2025, aged eighty-seven.

Ngũgĩ was one of Africa’s most influential literary voices, a tireless champion of indigenous languages and postcolonial identity, and a perennial favourite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He was born on 5 January, 1938, in Kamirithu, a village north of Nairobi, Kenya. One of 28 children, his father having four wives, he was baptised James Ngugi—a name he famously later dropped, along with writing in English.

Ngũgĩ’s early work was subtly critical of the colonial state. His first work of fiction, Weep Not, Child, was published in 1964, and was the first major novel in English by an East African author. His second novel, The River Between, published in 1965 while Ngũgĩ was studying on a scholarship at the University of Leeds in the UK, explored the tension between tradition and modernity in colonial Kenya.

These early works established Ngũgĩ as a powerful new voice, but it was his later decision to reject English as his primary literary language that defined his revolutionary literary attitude.

In 1977, Ngũgĩ’s play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) angered Kenyan authorities, and he was imprisoned without trial. Following his detention, he decided to write primarily in Gĩkũyũ, his native language, as an act of cultural resistance. Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ (Devil on the Cross), the first modern novel in Gĩkũyũ, was written on prison toilet paper.

Wizard of the Crow, a satirical epic published in 2006, is considered by many to be Ngũgĩ’s masterpiece. Written in Gĩkũyũ and later translated into English by the author himself, the novel combines traditional African storytelling with contemporary political critique, addressing themes of power, corruption and resistance.

Beyond his fiction, Ngũgĩ was perhaps even more influential as a theorist and essayist. His seminal book Decolonising the Mind, published in 1986, argued passionately for the importance of African languages in literature and education, and challenged the literary establishment to take up his cause.  

Ngũgĩ was forced to leave Kenya in 1982 due to political persecution. His academic career took him from Kenya to the US, where he taught at Yale and New York universities. He later served as Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Throughout his decades in exile, Ngũgĩ remained a vocal critic of neocolonialism and a proponent of cultural independence.

Ngũgĩ’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and his short story ‘The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright’ became one of the most translated stories in the world—being available in 100 languages. He made history in 2021, becoming the first writer to be nominated for the prestigious International Booker Prize as both author and translator, for The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi—also the first nominated work in an indigenous African language.

In his speech at Wits University in Johannesburg in 2017, titled ‘Secure the base, decolonise the mind’, Ngũgĩ spoke about the ‘power relationship between the language of the conqueror and the language of the vanquished’, and asked whether, after fifty years, we have ‘regained the cultural and intellectual independence that we had lost to colonialism’.

‘I have always argued that each language, big or small, has its unique musicality; there is no language, whose musicality and cognitive potential, is inherently better than another,’ he said. But he insisted that the strengthening of African languages would create ‘an Africa secure in its base’, able to engage confidently with other peoples and continents.

Ngũgĩ had nine children, four of whom are authors: Tee Ngũgĩ, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, Nducu wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ. He leaves behind a legacy that transcends literature, having fundamentally changed how the world views African writing. His vision of a decolonised African literature will continue to inspire writers and activists around the world.

As Lebohang Mojapelo wrote in her review of Ngũgĩ: Reflections on His Life of Writing in this journal: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an African in possession of a curiosity about literature has read a book by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and that it probably changed the direction of their life and their perspective on their African identity.’

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See also:

• Showcasing African literature’s contribution to decolonisation—Lebohang Mojapelo reviews Ngũgĩ: Reflections on His Life of Writing
• ‘Speaking Shona was associated with humiliation’: Petina Gappah on the influence, on her writing, of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind
• Read an excerpt from a new edition of Alex La Guma’s A Soviet Journey, including the Foreword by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
• Showcasing African literature’s contribution to decolonisation—Lebohang Mojapelo reviews Ngũgĩ: Reflections on His Life of Writing
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is the favourite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature—again

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