Why Ngugi never won the nobel prize

[Banyamulenge]

The death of Meja Mwangi (RIP) has reminded to comment on why Ngugi never won the Nobel prize. Many Kenyans will claim the Nobel committee snubbed him because of his (almost) militant, pro-African languages stances. But I disagree.
In my view, Ngugi was not a true artist in the strictest meaning of the word. He was mostly a political ideologue who used literature to convey his political message. Sure, many writers use art to convey their socio-cultural and political orientations and also as a tool for protest but the problem with Ngugi is that he never possessed the artistic skills to convey his political messages in a truly artistic and ‘neutral’ manner. His ideological shadow has always overshadowed his characters. In many of his works, he has no problem sabotaging his characters’ development in order to advance his ideologies. His blatant pro-peasants’ narrations have always compromised the literary merit of his works. The only true novel that Ngugi ever wrote was a grain of wheat. In fact, after that novel, his works became obscenely political and ethnocentric. His latter-day works didn’t redeem him. The wizard of the crow is basically the usual sob story about the quintessential African dictator- of course a caricature- and his numberless victims. Sure, he does a fairly good job utilizing magical realism as a literary device but the fact that he seems to always use political lens to map out his narrative doesn’t do the novel any justice.
Take Wole Soynika, for instance. Although his works are quite inaccessible to the average reader, he is a true artist. Before being a socially conscious intellectual with certain political beliefs, he is first of all a true artist, a true playwright- and this worked in his favor, earning him the Nobel. For Ngugi, though, instead of first being a true novelist, he is first a political ideologue. Literature to Ngugi becomes a vessel to dole out his political convictions, a platform for his social protest. His main characters in almost all of his works are thus caricatured as either oppressors or oppressed- this couldn’t have allowed him to develop truly living and ‘real’ characters.
If I can digress, I always have this feeling that Ngugi was a kikuyu supremacist hiding behind intellectualism and literary pursuits. Once Moi was out of power, Ngugi suddenly went quiet and could no longer notice the injustices and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Government led by Kibaki, his fellow Okuyu…….why? I stand to be corrected but he was probably just a refined tribal chauvinist.
Anyway, I can dare claim that when it comes to fiction, Meja Mwangi was a better novelist than Ngugi. But Mwangi wasn’t into academia and this denied him a crucial platform that would have allowed him to receive the critical acclaim that he deserved.
Anyway, may the two writers RIP.

[Mangele]

This is very true…and sadly, his message was restricted to Gikuyu domination in the name of a non-existent superiority.

@Banyamulenge

Ngugi was not a true artist in the strictest meaning of the word. He was mostly a political ideologue who used literature to convey his political message. Sure, many writers use art to convey their socio-cultural and political orientations and also as a tool for protest but the problem with Ngugi is that he never possessed the artistic skills to convey his political messages in a truly artistic and ‘neutral’ manner.

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