Overview

• Ngugi wa Thiong’o died in Atlanta on May 28 at age 87, his daughter Wanjiku announced on Facebook.
• He abandoned English for his native Kikuyu after his 1977 imprisonment for a Gikuyu play, producing landmark works such as Devil on the Cross.
• His essay collection Decolonising the Mind and subsequent novels exposed colonial-era violence and post-colonial inequalities in Kenya.
• Following self-imposed exile in 1982, he served as a professor at the California, Irvine, shaping new generations of writers.
• He translated his own works and earned an International Booker nomination in 2021 for his novel-in-verse The Perfect Nine, reflecting his global impact.