Overview
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o passed away on May 28 in Bedford, Georgia, at age 87, as announced by his daughter Wanjiku Wa Ngũgĩ
- He shifted from writing in English to Gikuyu following his 1977 imprisonment for co-authoring the play 'Ngaahika Ndeenda', a stand against linguistic colonialism
- During his year in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he composed his first Gikuyu novel, 'Devil on the Cross', on toilet paper to assert cultural sovereignty
- He lived in self-imposed exile from 1982 and taught comparative literature at institutions including the University of California, Irvine, with his verse novel 'The Perfect Nine' later shortlisted for the International Booker Prize
- Considered a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he never received it but profoundly influenced writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ben Okri