Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born James Thiong’o Ngugi in Limuru, Kenya in 1938. One of the foremost living African novelists, he has also developed a reputation as a post-colonial theorist, and has taught at universities around the world, currently holding a post as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine.
As a student at Makerere University in Uganda, he published his first short stories. After graduating, he pursued a second bachelor’s degree at Leeds University in England. He eventually became a professor of English, and has taught around the world. As an adult, he dropped his Western first name and adopted his current Bantu name...