Along with other icons of African writing, Ngũgĩ taught generations how to decolonise literature, language and the mind• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, giant of African literature, dies aged 87Growing up in post-independence Nigeria in the 1970s, at home you always had access to the Bible if you were Christian, or the Qur’an if you were Muslim, along with books in the Heinemann African Writers Series. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was a staple, and the plays of Wole Soyinka: The Lion and the Jewel, most likely, or The Trials of Brother Jero. Often accompanying them were books by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – I remember we had both Weep Not Child and The River Between. And even if you didn’t have them at home, you’d soon encounter them in school – they were standard set texts, from secondary school to college.These three writers belonged to the so-called first generation of African writing, the generation that started publishing in the 1950s and 1960s. The three names stood, like the legs of the three-legged pot, under African literature, while in the pot was cooking whatever fare the minds of these writers conceived of. They shared a similarity of subject matter: pro-independence, pan-Africanist, postcolonial theory, but stylistically they were very different from one another. Kenyan Ngũgĩ, unlike the two Nigerians, was shaped by very stern political obstacles, pushing him to take very radical positions on politics and language. Continue reading...