Matigari

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo

Heinemann, 1989 - Africa - 175 pages

A moral fable in which Martigari, a freedom fighter, emerges from the forest in the political dawn of post-independence Kenya. Searching for his family and a new future, he finds little has changed.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - GlebtheDancer - LibraryThing

Matigari is about a freedom fighter who returns from the wilderness after laying his weapons aside at the end of the wars of independence in his unnamed country. He returns to find the government ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - kidzdoc - LibraryThing

In the preface to this novel, Ngũgĩ informs us that Matigari was written in 1983, while he was living in exile in London. It was published in the Gĩkũyũ language in 1986, and translated into English ...

About the author

Novelist, playwright, and essayist, Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born in Kenya on January 5, 1938. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda in 1963. He is Kenya's best-known writer and one of East Africa's most outspoken social critics. His first novel, Weep Not, Child (1964), was a penetrating account of the Mau Mau uprising (a tribal revolt that occurred in colonial Kenya) and was the first English-language novel by an East African. Two subsequent works, The River Between (1965) and A Grain of Wheat (1967), are sensitive novels about the Kikuyu people caught between the old and the new Africa. One of his major concerns has been the lack of reading materials in native African languages. In an attempt to bring literature to African peasants and workers, he wrote and produced the play I Will Marry When I Want (1977) in his native Kikuyu language. The play, which shows the exploitation of Kikuyu workers and peasants, attracted a large audience of poor Kenyans. It also led to Ngugi's arrest and imprisonment. After his release from prison, he went into exile and is currently living in the United States. His other works include Detained (1981); Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986); and Matigari (1987). He received the 2001 Nonino International Prize for Literature. In 2006, Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, Wizard of the Crow.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Matigari; Volume 823 of African writers series, ISSN 0065-4108; Heinemann African writers series; Heinemann educational books
• Authors: Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo
• Translated by: Wangui wa Goro, Wang ui wa Goro
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Heinemann, 1989
• ISBN: 0435905465, 9780435905460
• Length: 175 pages