The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction

East Africa

In the 1960s, East Africa—particularly Kenya and Uganda—became a hub of early postcolonial literature in Africa. A local publishing industry and a relatively large readership helped foster a writing culture, and the University of East Africa, specifically the campus of what is now Makerere University, was a major African literary center at that time. In the late 1960s, the future Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul was a writer in residence in Makerere, and Paul Theroux taught there. But now only a few writers from the region are well known outside Africa, principally Kenyan Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (b. 1938) and Somali Nuruddin Farah (b. 1945), and younger authors are still largely overshadowed by those from elsewhere in Africa or the former Commonwealth.

KENYA

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (b. 1938) published his first works under his Christian name, James Ngugi, and wrote in English, but in the 1970s he first reverted to his traditional name and later also began to write in Gikuyu, the language of the largest ethnic group in Kenya. (Ngũgĩ, however, continues to translate most of his own work into English himself.) Spanning nearly half a century, Ngũgĩ’s works address much of modern Kenyan and African history, often in highly critical terms. In the 1970s, Ngũgĩ was jailed without charge, and in 1982, he left the country during a time of considerable political unrest and instability; he has lived abroad ever since, most recently in the United States.

Early novels by Ngũgĩ, such as the autobiographical Weep Not, Child (1964) as well as A Grain of Wheat (1967, revised 1986), are anchored in Kenyan history and conditions. Weep Not, Child is set during the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s. In this novel, Ngũgĩ shows the devastating cost of the conflict on families when its protagonist, a young boy named Njoroge who is concentrating on his education, gets caught up in the conflict, both affecting his ability to get a decent education and fraying family bonds. A Grain of Wheat takes place in the days leading up to Kenyan independence in 1963, though many of the flashbacks look at the four protagonists’ earlier experiences. This nonlinear, almost jumbled approach is frequently found in Ngũgĩ’s fiction and is particularly effective here, with the pivotal point of a new dawn always on the horizon, even as each of the main figures confronts betrayals from his or her past. The polemical and polyphonic Petals of Blood (1977) is a critique of the failures of postindependence leadership, set in the town of Ilmorog. All of its four principal characters are outsiders there, and Ilmorog itself is representative of the destructive changes that have taken place in Kenya. In addition, the four are suspects in a murder case, with the investigation into it being one of the threads that holds together this fairly loose narrative.

Devil on the Cross (1980, English 1982), written while he was in jail, was the first novel Ngũgĩ wrote in Gikuyu. Fiercely political, it is also a far more fantastical satire than his earlier work and paved the way for his greatest novel to date, the massive satire Wizard of the Crow (2004–2006, English 2006). Set in the fictional African republic of Aburiria, this novel features an inept leader known simply as the Ruler who is interested only in money and personal glory and is indulged by his sycophantic and power-seeking advisers. The “Wizard of the Crow” of the title is a creation of two desperate characters who assume the role of an invented spiritual healer-cum-sorcerer and soon find their services in great demand. The comedy here is lighter than that in most of Ngũgĩ’s earlier works, and the novel has a generous spirit, even when it ridicules the excesses of the ruling class.

Meja Mwangi (b. 1948) is an author attuned to popular international fiction but writing primarily for a local audience. The variety of his large output, which includes thrillers and young adult fiction, makes it difficult to classify him. Several of Mwangi’s gritty urban novels from the 1970s attracted considerable attention, and works such as Going Down River Road (1976) and The Cockroach Dance (1979) are powerful depictions of the lives of the Nairobi protagonists with little chance of escaping to something better. More recently, Mwangi has tackled other social issues, as in The Last Plague (also published as Crossroads; 2000), a novel set in the town of Crossroads that has been decimated by AIDS.

British-born Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye (1928–2015) moved to Kenya only in 1954 but, after her marriage, became fully integrated into the Luo community. Most of her novels are not, however, primarily rooted in her distinctive background but offer more general depictions of Kenya. Coming to Birth (1986) begins with the newly married sixteen-year-old protagonist, Paulina, coming to Nairobi to join her husband a few years before independence. Already pregnant, she quickly miscarries, and the novel is full of difficult birth pangs, ranging from that of the nation itself to Paulina’s own maturation. The Present Moment (1987) ranges even further, with the old women who have come to a Christian old-age home known as the Refuge talking about their lives, allowing Macgoye to reflect on the changes in Kenya during their long lifetimes. A much younger generation of nurses with different experiences gives the novel an intriguing contrast.

Grace Ogot (1930–2015) is a popular writer whose stories are well known. While much of her fiction explores the role of women in contemporary Kenyan society, one of her most interesting works is The Strange Bride (1983, English 1989), a variation on a Luo myth that explains the origins of agricultural cultivation. Unlike Ogot’s other works, written in English, The Strange Bride was written in Luo, and its reliance on oral-storytelling traditions make it a good example of the blending of different approaches to fiction.

THE TRIAL OF CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO

Ali A. Mazrui’s (1933–2014) only novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo (1971), is a worthwhile oddity. It is a novel of ideas, set in an after-Africa where its dead protagonist, Hamisi, must pass a test to fully cross over into the afterlife. His own fate is, however, overshadowed by that of another new arrival, the great Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo (1932–1967), who died fighting in the Nigerian civil war and stands accused of being reckless with his great artistic talent. A programmatic novel, the audacity of The Trial of Christopher Okigbo is fascinating, provoking questions about the role of the artist in society.

UGANDA

A burgeoning literary scene in Uganda in the 1960s was largely quelled by the despotic rule of Idi Amin, which lasted from 1971 to his overthrow in 1979. Although Amin’s rule continues to cast a long shadow over Ugandan writing, its monstrosity has also inspired foreign authors in such different works as one of Donald E. Westlake’s (1933–2008) best thrillers, the heist tale Kahawa (1982); Giles Foden’s (b. 1967) novel of a hapless Scottish doctor drawn into Amin’s house of horrors, The Last King of Scotland (1998); and Rosa Shand’s (b. 1937) The Gravity of Sunlight (2000), the story of a young American couple and their three children living in Uganda when Amin came to power.

Ugandan authors have also written extensively about the Amin years, both directly or in more allegorical works such as John Nagenda’s (b. 1938) The Seasons of Thomas Tebo (1986). Whereas Moses Isegawa’s (b. 1963) sprawling novel Abyssinian Chronicles (1998, first English-language publication 2000) stretches from the 1960s to the present, his Snakepit (1999, first English-language publication 2004) focuses on Amin’s rule. The autobiographical Abyssinian Chronicles is typical of fiction that seeks to mirror a nation’s recent history, from independence to the present, in the experiences of a single character—in this case, the narrator, Mugezi. Isegawa ultimately overextends himself in following Mugezi to Europe, but otherwise this far-flung family tale is carried along very well by Mugezi’s driven narrative. In Snakepit, the protagonist, Bat Katanga, returns to Amin’s Uganda after getting his degree from Cambridge University, hoping to work for the good of his country in the civil service but finding much more difficult conditions than he anticipated. Essentially a thriller, the novel presents the elaborate and brutal but often futile power games that a number of characters try to play, and in its messy and rushed uncertainty, the narrative gives a good sense of Ugandan life under Amin.