Literary Wizard

Ngugi wa Thiong'o at the book reading of Wizard of the Crow on 10th August. The author considers England his second home, and was once a resident of Islington, North London. Here he is with his wife Njeeri, a day before the 2nd anniversary of the attack they suffered on return to Kenya. The author's young son, Thiong'o (who got to say a few words on the night, thanking the audience in an American accent for coming to honour his father) is next to Njeeri. Ngugi seemed to want to make the event a celebration of life and survival, bringing his family along to the event. Lucky for the audience, they got five Thiong'os for the price of one. Ngugi explained that his younger children had only been spared the attack because, as luck would have it, they had chosen to go and spend the night with a relative.

Ngugi autographs a copy of Wizard of the Crow for a reader lucky to be the first in line, a neverending queue for autographs at Congress Hall.


Thanking the blog reader who sent me the link to this piece on Ngugi...

"Moi used to say, 'I can forgive anybody but Ngugi'," says the 68-year-old novelist today at his home in Irvine, where he is a professor of English at the University of California. At just over five feet tall, with a ready giggle, he is hardly the portrait of a steely revolutionary. When Moi agreed to abide by term limits, and his hand-picked successor lost in the presidential elections, Wa Thiong'o realised that he had a chance to come home. It was good timing. Wa Thiong'o had just completed a six-volume satirical novel called Murogi wa Kagogo, a ribald satire of a fictional African dictator. It was also the longest novel ever written in his native Gikuyu language.
-read the article.

• Images: taken @ Congress Centre, London, 10 August 2006; by MW