Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Gikuyu pronunciation: [goge wa dioNGo]; born 5 January 1938) is a Kenyan writer, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mutiiri.
In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theatre in his native 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 Ngugi, encourages passivity in "ordinary people". Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year.
Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi.


== Biography ==
Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half-brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamiriithu homeguard post.He attended The Alliance High School. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, The Black Hermit, was produced in Kampala in 1962.
Ngugi published his first novel, Weep Not, Child, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by a writer from East Africa.  His second novel, The River Between (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. The River Between is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus.
His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili.
In 1976 he helped set up The Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre which, among other things, organised African Theatre in the area. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) provoked the then Kenyan Vice-President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Ngugi wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross), on prison-issued toilet paper.
After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return.
His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and Matigari (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale.
In 1992, Ngugi became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine.
On 8 August 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On 11 August, robbers broke into his high-security apartment: they assaulted Ngugi, sexually assaulted his wife and stole various items of value. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, Wizard of the Crow, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author.
On 10 November 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the African-American community and the Africans living in America, prompting an apology by the hotel.
His most recent books are Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance, a collection of essays published in 2009 making the argument for the crucial role of African languages in "the resurrection of African memory," and two autobiographical works: Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010) and In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir (2012).


== Awards and honours ==

1973 Lotus Prize for Literature
2001 Nonino International Prize for Literature
Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize
2012 National Book Critics Circle Award (finalist Autobiography) for In the House of the Interpreter
2014 Nicolas Guillen Lifetime Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature


=== Honorary degrees ===
University of Dar es Salaam, Honorary doctorate in Literature, November 2013
University of Bayreuth, Honorary doctorate (Dr. phil. h.c.), 5 May 2014


== List of works ==
The Black Hermit, 1963 (play)
Weep Not, Child, 1964, Heinemann, 1987, Macmillan 2005, ISBN 1-4050-7331-4
The River Between, Heinemann 1965, Heinemann 1989, ISBN 0-435-90548-1
A Grain of Wheat, 1967 (1992), ISBN 0-14-118699-2
This Time Tomorrow (three plays, including the title play, "The Reels", and "The Wound in the Heart"), c. 1970
Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics, Heinemann, 1972, ISBN 0-435-18580-2
A Meeting in the Dark (1974)
Secret Lives, and Other Stories, 1976, Heinemann, 1992, ISBN 0-435-90975-4
The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (play), 1976, ISBN 0-435-90191-5, African Publishing Group, ISBN 0-949932-45-0 (with Micere Githae Mugo and Njaka)
Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want), 1977 (play; with Ngugi wa Mirii), Heinemann Educational Books (1980)
Petals of Blood (1977) Penguin, 2002, ISBN 0-14-118702-6
Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross), 1980
Writers in Politics: Essays, 1981, ISBN 978-0-85255-541-5 (UK), ISBN 978-0-435-08985-6 (US)
Education for a National Culture, 1981
Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary, 1981
Devil on the Cross (English translation of Caitaani mutharaba-Ini), Heinemann, 1982, ISBN 0-435-90200-8
Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya, 1983
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, 1986, ISBN 978-0-85255-501-9 (UK), ISBN 978-0-435-08016-7 (US)
Mother, Sing For Me, 1986
Writing against Neo-Colonialism, 1986
Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus (Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu), 1986 (children's book)
Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986
Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief (Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'i), 1988 (children's book)
Matigari (translated into English by Wangui wa Goro), Heinemann, 1989, Africa World Press 1994, ISBN 0-435-90546-5
Njamba Nene's Pistol (Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene), (children's book), 1990, Africa World Press, ISBN 0-86543-081-0
Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom, Heinemann, 1993, ISBN 978-0-435-08079-2 (US) ISBN 978-0-85255-530-9 (UK)
Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1996), Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-818390-9
Murogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow), 2004, East African Educational Publishers, ISBN 9966-25-162-6
Wizard of the Crow, 2006, Secker, ISBN 1-84655-034-3
Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance, Basic Civitas Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-465-00946-6
Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir, Harvill Secker, 2010, ISBN 978-1-84655-377-6
In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir, Pantheon, 2012, ISBN 978-0-30790-769-1


== See also ==
Kenyan literature
21st century in literature
World literature


== References ==


== External links ==
Official homepage
Interview of Ngugi wa Thiong'o by Leonard Lopate on WNYC, New York public radio, following publication of Wizard of the Crow
Petri Liukkonen. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Archived from the original on 4 July 2013.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o - Overview
biography and booklist
Biography of Ngugi from University of Florida Library
The Language of Scholarship in Africa, 2012 lecture by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, published in Leeds African Studies Bulletin 74 (December 2012), pp. 42-47.
'Publishing Ngugi' by James Currey, in Leeds African Studies Bulletin 68 (May 2006), pp. 26-54.