Kenyan Iconic author James Ngugi, populary known as Ngûgî Wa Thiong’o passed on, Wednesday 28th May 2025.
The family disclosed that he died in United States Of America after a long illness.
The East Africa’s leading novelist was born on January 1938.
He began writing in English, before he switched to write primarily in Gîkuyû.
He wrote scripts including; novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children’s literature.
Ngugi was the brains behind the popular novels including; ‘The River Between’, ‘Petals Of Blood’, ‘Weep Not, Child’, and ‘A grain Of Wheat.’
He is also the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story ‘The Upright Revolution‘: Or ‘Why Humans Walk Upright’ has been translated into 100 languages.
In 1977, Ngũgĩ embarked upon a novel form of theatre in Kenya that sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be “the general bourgeois education system”, by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances.
His project sought to “demystify” the theatrical process, and to avoid the “process of alienation that produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers” which, according to Ngũgĩ, encourages passivity in “ordinary people”.
Although his landmark play Ngaahika Ndeenda, co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening, with Ngũgĩ getting subsequently slapped with imprisonment for over a year.
Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya.
He was appointed Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine.
He previously taught at Northwestern University, Yale University, and New York University. Ngũgĩ has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He won the 2001 International Nonino Prize in Italy, and the 2016 Park Kyong-ni Prize. Among his children are; authors Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.
