Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the African literary revolution

Late Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o [File, Standard]

The passing of celebrated Kenyan writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on 28 May 2025 marks the end of a remarkable period in African literary history the fabulous decades in the second half of the 20th century when African writers came to command the world stage.

This was the time of what I call the African literary revolution. As a scholar of African literature and the author of many books and papers on Ngũgĩ, I have raised several questions about this period. Why and how did this revolution happen? What motivated this turn to the imagination as a tool of decolonisation? And what was Ngũgĩ’s role in this drama?