AT 81, Ngugi wa Thiong’o Announces 34th Book, a Gikuyu Philosophical Epic Novel, 13 Years After His Last
Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Photo credit: Leonardo Cendamo, Leemage.
Thirteen years after his last novel Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who turned 81 on 5 January, has a new one forthcoming. Kenda Muiyuru: Rugano Rwa Gikuyu na Mumbi, published in Gikuyu by East African Educational Publishers, is, according to Kenya’s The Standard, “a ground-breaking epic that subverts patriarchy and roots for social equity.” The book, the author’s 10th fiction book and 34th overall, will be translated into English by him, as The Perfect Nine: The Story of Gikuyu and Mumbi.
Writing in The Standard, Peter Kimani, author of Dance of the Jacaranda, calls Kenda Muiyiru “ground-breaking on several fronts,” both as an epic, “a genre that he is least known for,” and as “an affirmation of his decades-long commitment of writing in an African language.” While the revered author has been writing fiction primarily in his native Gikuyu for decades, since 1980’s Caitaani Mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross), he has stated that his nonfiction and academic work would continue to be written first in English.
Kimani calls the 136-page novel, Ngugi’s shortest so far, his most feminist yet, writing that it “proudly joins the hallowed space of world epics, such as Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali and epics of ancient India such as Ramayana and Mahabharata.” Aesthetically, “it is possibly his most sophisticated. Every line encapsulates sage philosophy, rendered with lyrical tenderness.”
In December, Ngugi: Reflections on His Life of Writing, edited by Simon Gikandi and Ndirangu Wachanga to celebrate his 80 years of age, was released by the British publisher Boydell & Brewer.