A Reading List: 10 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Works You Should Know

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wasn’t just a writer — he was a liberator of language, memory, and imagination. Born in 1938 in Limuru, Kenya, at the height of British colonial rule, he spent his life unlearning the systems meant to erase him and rebuilding a literary world in which African voices, stories, and languages could stand tall. His work made it clear: the pen could be a machete, carving paths to freedom. From the village schoolrooms of his youth to global lecture halls, Ngũgĩ challenged not only colonial structures but the post-independence betrayals that followed.

He was educated at Alliance High School in Kenya, a prestigious British-run school. He then attended Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, earning a B.A. in English in 1963. Later, he pursued graduate studies at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Throughout his academic career, Ngũgĩ held professorial positions at several U.S. institutions, including Northwestern University, Yale University, and New York University, and ultimately served as Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.

He gave up writing in English to write in Gikuyu — not out of defiance, but out of love. Love for a language that held the laughter, sorrow, and wisdom of his people. He was imprisoned for staging a play, exiled for telling the truth, and blacklisted for insisting that Africa deserved better — better leaders, better futures, better stories. Even in his final years, he remained rooted in the work. At the time of his death at the age of 87 in a hospital in Georgia, U.S., on May 28, 2025, Ngũgĩ was still writing.

In a May 2025 interview, he expressed his intention to write a book titled Normalized Abnormality, which would explore the enduring impacts of colonialism globally. Despite health challenges, including kidney issues, he remained committed to his writing, stating, “I will write it if I have the energy.” His most recent published work, The Language of Languages (2023), is a collection of essays and lectures on translation, written and delivered over the past two decades.

While it is hard to choose from such a towering body of work, OkayAfrica has selected 10 of the most powerful, enduring, and groundbreaking works by Ngũgĩ that have shaped not only African literature but also global conversations about justice and identity.