Globalectics: Theory and The Politics Of Knowing by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. New York. January 2012. Columbia University Press. 106 pages.  Jacket image: Sokey Edorh, ‘Les Gendarmes d’Afrique’, 2006. Jacket design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee. 9780231159500.  

  FROM THE PUBLISHER - A masterful writer working in many genres, Ngugi wa Thiong'o entered the East African literary scene in 1962 with the performance of his first major play, THE BLACK HERMIT, at the National Theatre in Uganda. In 1977 he was imprisoned after his most controversial work, Ngaahika Ndeenda ( I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT), produced in Nairobi, sharply criticized the injustices of Kenyan society and unequivocally championed the causes of ordinary citizens. Following his release, Ngugi decided to write only in his native Gikuyu, communicating with Kenyans in one of the many languages of their daily lives, and today he is known as one of the most outspoken intellectuals working in postcolonial theory and the global postcolonial movement. In this volume, Ngugi wa Thiong'o summarizes and develops a cross-section of the issues he has grappled with in his work, which deploys a strategy of imagery, language, folklore, and character to ‘decolonize the mind.’ Ngugi confronts the politics of language in African writing; the problem of linguistic imperialism and literature's ability to resist it; the difficult balance between orality, or ‘orature,’ and writing, or ‘literature’; the tension between national and world literature; and the role of the literary curriculum in both reaffirming and undermining the dominance of the Western canon. Throughout, he engages a range of philosophers and theorists writing on power and postcolonial creativity, including Hegel, Marx, Lévi-Strauss, and Aimé Césaire. Yet his explorations remain grounded in his own experiences with literature (and orature) and reworks the difficult dialectics of theory into richly evocative prose.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system’, by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify’ the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers’ which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people’. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.

Dreams In A Time Of War: A Childhood Memoir by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. New York. 2010. Pantheon. 261 pages. Jacket design by Peter Mendelsund. 9780307378835.

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe. New York. 2009. Knopf. 192 pages. October 2009. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde. 9780307272553.

  FROM THE PUBLISHER -From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart and winner of the Man Booker International Prize comes a new collection of autobiographical essays-his first new book in more than twenty years. Chinua Achebe's characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. In a preface, he discusses his historic visit to his Nigerian homeland on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, the story of his tragic car accident nearly twenty years ago, and the potent symbolism of President Obama's election. In 'The Education of a British-Protected Child,' Achebe gives us a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its 'middle ground,' recalling both his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths of colonial rule. In 'Spelling Our Proper Name,' Achebe considers the African-American diaspora, meeting and reading Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, and learning what it means not to know 'from whence he came.' The complex politics and history of Africa figure in 'What Is Nigeria to Me?,' 'Africa's Tarnished Name,' and 'Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature.' And Achebe's extraordinary family life comes into view in 'My Dad and Me' and 'My Daughters,' where we observe the effect of Christian missionaries on his father and witness the culture shock of raising 'brown' children in America. Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise,The Education of a British-Protected Child is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

Hypothermia: An Icelandic Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason. New York. 2010. Minotaur/St. Martin’s. 314 pages. September 2010. Jacket design by Ervin Serrano based on a series design by Henry Sene Yee. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. 9780312569914.

  FROM THE PUBLISHER -Arnaldur Indridason has already established himself as one of the most accomplished of the Nordic crime writers, and he’s in top form in HYPOTHERMIA. Inspector Erlunder has spent his entire career struggling to evade the ghosts of his past. But ghosts are visiting him, both in the form of a séance attended by a dead woman and also in the reemerging puzzle of two young people who went missing 30 years ago. And there’s the ghost of the detective’s disastrous marriage, which, despite the pleas of his drug-addled daughter, he is unwilling to confront. In addition, he’s still obsessed with the disappearance of his brother, who vanished without a trace when they were boys. He can only run from his ghosts for so long, and, when they finally catch up with him, Erlunder is forced to face the heart shattering truth of his past. One of the most haunting crime novels readers are likely to encounter this year or any other, this is classic story that belongs on the shelf of every serious reader of suspense fiction. HYPOTHERMIA will chill you to the bone.

 

Arnaldur Indridason was born in 1961. He worked at an Icelandic newspaper, first as a journalist and then for many years as a film reviewer. He won the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel for both JAR CITY and SILENCE OF THE GRAVE, and in 2005 SILENCE OF THE GRAVE also won the CWA Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of the year. (The film of JAR CITY, now available on DVD, was Iceland’s entry for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.) Indridason lives in Iceland, and his next novel in the series is forthcoming soon from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur.

 

 

 

   

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