ON May 28, 2025, the world bid farewell to one of Africa’s most fearless literary icons, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. His passing at the age of 87 marked the end of a life defined by storytelling, resistance, and the power of language.

For over six decades, he wielded his pen as a weapon, using fiction, essays, and drama to expose colonial injustice and demand cultural sovereignty. His unyielding belief that language is the soul of identity, that is visible in his writing, became the heartbeat of his work.

Born in 1938 in Limuru, Kenya, during British colonial rule, Ngũgĩ grew up amid the tensions of the Mau Mau rebellion and the struggle for independence. These early experiences became the foundation of his literary themes. His debut novel, Weep Not, Child, was the first English-language novel published by an East African author. It was followed by ‘The River Between’ and ‘A Grain of Wheat’, which explored Kenya’s path to freedom and the moral cost of revolution.

In 1977, Ngũgĩ co-wrote the play Ngaahika Ndeenda “I Will Marry When I Want” in Gikuyu, performed by and for local villagers. The play’s critique of post-independence corruption and inequality was so provocative that the Kenyan government imprisoned him without trial. While incarcerated, he famously wrote Devil on the Cross, his first novel in Gikuyu on toilet paper.

That moment catalysed his most radical decision to abandon English entirely. In ‘Decolonising the Mind’, Ngũgĩ argued that language is not neutral it’s political. Writing in a colonial language, he said, alienates people from their culture. From then on, he dedicated his work to promoting African languages as tools of empowerment and resistance.

Due to his his political activism and his writing which critiqued the Kenyan government, he was forced into exile. He was initially detained without trial in 1978 for producing a play in Gikuyu, his mother tongue, and later learned of a plot to kill him upon his return to Kenya. This led him to self exile in the UK and then the US. 

He then went on to teach at universities around the world, including Northwestern University and Yale University. He continued to inspire through novels like Matigari and Wizard of the Crow, which combined folklore, satire, and political critique. Throughout his life, he remained a committed champion of linguistic and cultural decolonisation.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s death has left a deep void in world literature. Yet his legacy endures in every African child who reads in their mother tongue and in every writer who dares to challenge power through the written word.