Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is a Kenyan novelist, poet, playwright and distinguished academic. Ngugi burst onto the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his first major play The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda in 1962. In 1967 Ngugi became a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Nairobi and played a central role in the development of English departments across Africa. Ngugi championed changing the term English simply to Literature to reflect world literature with African and third world literatures at the centre. In 1977 Ngugi’s novel Petal’s of Blood was published. It was sharply critical of the inequalities and injustices of Kenyan society and as a result he was arrested in December 1977 and imprisoned without charge at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. He was finally released in December 1978 and was forced to live in exile finally returning 22 years later.