We are saddened to hear of the death of our author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. A giant of international literature, Harvill and Vintage have been proud to publish Ngũgĩ’s work since his 2004 masterpiece, The Wizard of the Crow. His seminal novels Weep, Not Child; The River Between; A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood are published in the Vintage and Penguin Classics series. His insightful cycle of memoirs, Dreams in a Time of War, In the House of the Interpreter and Birth of a Dream Weaver illuminate his childhood years, his student days in Kampala and Leeds, and his development as a writer and academic. In addition to these, Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir recounts his time as a political prisoner in the 1970s in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison where he was held after one of his plays criticised the Kenyan government.
Ngũgĩ was an award-winning novelist, playwright, short-story writer and essayist whose work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In 2021 he was nominated for the International Man Booker Prize as both author and translator for his most recent book The Perfect Nine. Since 1980’s Devil on the Cross, which was written on toilet paper while he was in prison, Ngũgĩ has translated his work into English from Gikuyu. He was a key cultural commentator on colonialism and its legacy and wrote many essays on this subject and others collected in volumes such as Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature and The Language of Languages. He was Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.
His UK publisher, Liz Foley, said, ‘We have been very honoured to publish Ngũgĩ’s work at Harvill – most recently with his beautiful and mesmerising novel in verse The Perfect Nine – and to have enjoyed his visits to the UK over the years. He leaves behind a hugely influential body of work and an unparalleled cultural legacy.’