My encounters with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

If you really think you’re right, you stick to your beliefs, and they help you to survive – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan novelist, essayist, and revolutionary thinker, passed away today. He was one of the last great transcolonial African intellectuals—a writer who straddled both sides of independence. For over half a century, Ngũgĩ wrote with moral clarity and intellectual force about colonialism, liberation, language, and the failure of Africa’s post-independence elites to realise the dreams that so many fought and died for. 

Born in 1938 into a Gikuyu family, Ngũgĩ experienced the brutality of British rule firsthand. His brother was killed during the Mau Mau uprising, and as a child, he was imprisoned in a British concentration camp—designed to isolate freedom fighters from their communities. These early experiences marked him deeply, setting the stage for a lifetime of writing rooted in struggle. The camps he endured were not unlike what Israel today is attempting to build in Gaza—zones of confinement meant to break the link between a people and their resistance. 

 One of his formative influences was Frantz Fanon, and what endeared him to many—including myself—was that he never outgrew Fanon.  

Ngũgĩ’s early novels—Weep Not, Child, The River Between, and A Grain of Wheat—are now modern classics. His later fiction, such as Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, is sprawling, radical, and deeply political—blending satire, allegory, and social realism to depict the rot of neocolonial rule. His writing, epic in vision and lyrical in style, places him in the company of the great Russian masters: as precise and intimate as Chekhov, as bitingly satirical as Gogol, and as politically existential as Dostoevsky. 

But Ngũgĩ was not only a novelist. He was a political thinker of the highest order. One of his formative influences was Frantz Fanon, and what endeared him to many—including myself—was that he never outgrew Fanon. Even after decades of teaching at the world’s most elite universities, he still spoke of The Wretched of the Earth as a living text. Where many academics treat early radicalism as a youthful phase to be shed, Ngũgĩ carried his political commitments with him to the end—unapologetic, curious, and intellectually honest. There was a childlike sincerity in his love for ideas, and a humility that made him accessible to all. 

For a time, Jomo Kenyatta’s government tolerated Ngũgĩ’s criticisms—so long as they were written in English. But when he began writing plays in Gikuyu and organising community performances, he was deemed dangerous. That alone was enough to have him imprisoned. 

One of the more ironic episodes in his life came after he published a novel about a Mau Mau fighter, Kimathi, who emerges from the forest years after independence, only to find a country that looks nothing like the one he fought for. The story was so vivid that authorities believed it was based on a real person—and began searching for him to make an arrest. 

Ngũgĩ also wrote powerful non-fiction. The most famous of these—and one I strongly recommend—is Decolonising the Mind, a seminal text on language and self-determination. It remains a critical resource for understanding how colonial legacies persist through culture, education, and language, and is taught at universities around the world. Other essential texts include Moving the Centre, Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance, and Secure the Base, in which—at the age of 80—he offered a lucid, urgent reflection on the condition of Africa today. His memoirs, Dreams in a Time of War and In the House of the Interpreter, are not just personal recollections but political histories written with literary grace. 

I first met Ngũgĩ not through any formal introduction, but simply by walking into his office at UC Irvine. I had learned he was teaching there and didn’t want to repeat a mistake I had made years earlier when I found out that Achebe was nearby. 

As an undergraduate, I had been obsessed with Chinua Achebe—still am. A friend once urged me to visit him at Bard College in upstate New York, telling me Achebe was alone much of the time and would likely welcome the company. I didn’t go. The idea felt far-fetched. It seemed too difficult, too presumptuous. A few years later, Achebe passed away—and I was crushed. I still feel a strong sense of missed opportunity. 

 I asked him about that disagreement: about Achebe’s pragmatic embrace of English as a literary tool, and his own radical call for the abolition of the English department at the University of Nairobi. He told me that debate had shaped much of his life’s work. 

So, when I discovered that Ngũgĩ was at Irvine, I took it seriously. I showed up. And that first visit changed everything. He welcomed me with warmth and humility, and over the next two years, I spent countless hours with him—attending all his classes, sitting in his office, asking him questions about politics, history, and literature. He took me under his wing. He even invited me to teach some of his classes, especially the ones where his own books were being taught. It was a rare privilege and an immense act of confidence on his part—but also typical of his generosity with students. 

He shared with me his writing, his reflections, and personal stories—first-hand accounts of historical moments I had only read about. One of those was his now-famous debate with Chinua Achebe over the English language. I asked him about that disagreement: about Achebe’s pragmatic embrace of English as a literary tool, and his own radical call for the abolition of the English department at the University of Nairobi. He told me that debate had shaped much of his life’s work. 

Ngũgĩ wasn’t only welcoming to me, however. At his office, he welcomed everyone. Readers of his work—particularly Africans—would come by to pay him a visit, and he received them warmly. One morning, as he and I were sitting together, a Chadian pastor arrived with his wife, daughter, and grandson. The man had read Ngũgĩ’s books and simply wanted to meet him. He was an academic and a reader. Ngũgĩ welcomed him into his office, sat with him, listened, spoke. What was amazing was that although the two men came from opposite ends of the continent, they chatted as if they were from the same village and had known each other since childhood. Such was his remarkable warmth, and his ability to connect with people. 

 As a young man, he turned down Cambridge for Makerere. Principle was never optional for him—it was his compass. 

Before coming to UC Irvine, Ngũgĩ had taught at Yale. He decided to move to California in the end because Irvine had offered him a place where he could devote himself to research on African literature and its translation. The International Center for Writing and Translation, housed in the Department of Comparative Literature, was exactly such a place. That mattered more to him than prestige. It always had. As a young man, he turned down Cambridge for Makerere. Principle was never optional for him—it was his compass. Some of the other luminaries at Irvine included Aijaz Ahmad and Derrida—the latter also having come from Yale. In fact, Ngũgĩ’s office had previously belonged to Derrida. 

Speaking of principle, I remember Ngũgĩ once struggling with paperwork for a visa to South Korea, where he had been invited to lecture. I had seen him more than once discussing the issue of visas with his secretary. I asked him why he didn’t have a US passport. He responded that as an Africanist, it was important for him to keep his Kenyan passport—even if it made travelling more difficult. 

Meeting Ngũgĩ was a blessing in itself. But that day offered another gift. As I walked away from his office after our first meeting, I saw another name I recognised: Aijaz Ahmad, the Indian Marxist scholar whose book In Theory had been a major influence on me. I immediately made an appointment. He was more reserved, sterner, more cautious than Ngũgĩ—but once he saw how deeply I had engaged with his work, he too opened up. I asked if I could attend his classes. At first, he refused. But after some persistence, he relented. I remember once, after missing a class, he quietly said: “You weren’t here on Monday.” That attention meant everything. 

Ngũgĩ’s writing offers not just critique, but vision. 

With Aijaz, I had long walks discussing Marxism, Third Worldism, Indian politics, and the future of American hegemony. He would tell me stories about figures like Samir Amin. We spoke about the Arab Spring, the intellectual left, and the fragmentation of internationalism. 

All of it began with walking into Ngũgĩ’s office. Without that moment, I would never have met either of them. It was, truly, a once-in-a-lifetime experience—to spend unhurried time with two of the great minds of the 20th century. And to be treated not as a fan or a student, but as someone worth listening to. 

Ngũgĩ’s writing offers not just critique, but vision. His death marks the end of a chapter: the generation of African thinkers who lived on both sides of colonialism and tried, with sincerity and discipline, to think and write their way to liberation. 

With Ngũgĩ’s passing, that chapter is now closed. But the books remain. And so does the challenge he posed: to write, think, and act in service of something greater than oneself.