Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Kenyan author and academic Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote novels, plays, memoirs and essays, and is best known for The River Between and A Grain of Wheat, a novel set against Kenya's struggle for independence. He wrote first in English and later mostly in Gikuyu, becoming a strong advocate for literature in African languages, as argued in Decolonising the Mind. His memoir Detained covers his imprisonment after the Kenyan government shut down his play Ngaahika Ndeenda. He taught at the University of California, Irvine, and died in 2025.