Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born 1938) is a Kenyan author, playwright, and theorist who is among Africa's most celebrated writers and a perennial Nobel Prize contender. Born James Ngugi in Limuru, Kenya, he was educated at Makerere University and Leeds. His early novels — *Weep Not, Child* (1964) and *A Grain of Wheat* (1967) — established him as a major voice in postcolonial African literature. In 1977 his community theater play in Gikuyu was deemed subversive; he was detained without trial for a year. He subsequently abandoned English, writing exclusively in Gikuyu and Swahili, beginning with *Devil on the Cross* (1980), written on toilet paper while imprisoned. His theoretical work *Decolonising the Mind* (1986) is required reading in postcolonial studies worldwide. He has taught at Yale, New York University, and UC Irvine. Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo lived b. 1938.