Books by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
“It’s a novel about Kenya on the verge of independence with a rich cast of characters, from people who fought for independence to people who collaborated with the British colonialists. It’s about the legacy of violence, the intersection of public and private memory regarding conflict. It’s about how we commemorate war and how the celebration of war can be at odds with the experience of veterans. It’s about the possibility of redemption and moving forward from war.” Read more...
Phil Klay, Military Historians & Veteran
“It was written relatively soon after the Mau Mau uprising. Petals of Blood is his best book. African literature is too often put into a corner of the bookshop like some kind of booby prize. But it’s a world-class novel by any standards – it happens to deal with those themes, but it’s a cleverly constructed and accurate account… It’s sort of prescient. Like any great novel it opens the heart of the issue. It’s basically about the Mau Mau, and about various infighting and how the Mau Mau became, from his perspective, a gang war in some ways.” Read more...
The best books on Colonial Africa
Sam Kiley, Journalist
Interviews where books by Ngugi wa Thiong'o were recommended
The best books on Colonial Africa, recommended by Sam Kiley
‘Wherever you go today in the Congo, you will find monstrous warlords. But you will find far more volunteer nurses and Red Cross workers and teachers who haven’t been paid for 20 years but are still doing their job, not allowing things to fall apart.’
The best books on Veterans, recommended by Phil Klay
While many of us in the West commemorate the contribution of war veterans and the soldiers who lost their lives on our behalf, there’s also a tendency to see war as something distant and unconnected with our daily lives. Here Phil Klay, veteran of the US Marine Corps and award-winning novelist, recommends books that help bridge that gap—and capture the complicated relationship between soldiers and the societies on whose behalf they fight.
