Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo

Petals of Blood Reviews

• 
  Cheryl

  I once gave up on the ambitious narrative sprawl of
  Wizard of the Crow, only to find my mind and body buried within the passionate scribble of these Petals of Blood,
  

  A flower with petals of blood. It was a solitary red beanflower in a field dominated by white, blue, and violet flowers. No matter how you looked at it, it gave you the impression of a flow of blood.

  
  To find oneself lost within an arresting read of love, sex, betrayal, oppression, censorship, and economic strife, while also courted by narrative strength of style, voice and reflection, is a reason to love a piece of art. But to find oneself lost in the beautiful tragedy of 1960 Eastern Africa, to traverse the mire and loveliness of the peasant landscape of “a forgotten village,” to endure the stench of strife, feel the warm rush of Theng’eta, and yet become enthralled by endurance, is to find oneself forever inspired by a piece of art. Putting aside the somewhat frustrating use of the ellipsis, this novel employs an unusual rotation of one-paragraph pages and one-word sentences; fragmented thought and elegant phraseology—its style and story are contradictions that parallel the confusion of a newly formed democracy.
  
  Wanja is a tortured soul like Cynthia Bond’s Ruby; like Enchi’s Suga, she is at first economically powerless and the men she comes across only want to ‘possess’ her; like Kawabata’s Komako, she feels hopeless, as if prostitution has defined her; but unlike these characters, she is also an empowered entrepreneur and seductress. She is fascinating, even when her mindset is a bit discomfiting. Three men—Abdulla, Munira, and Karega—are linked to this poised prostitute, a victim who chooses to use rather than be used again, and each man like her, has escaped a past. Soon, they learn how their pasts are linked.
  
  Like his post-colonial peers Soyinka and Achebe, wa Thiong’o was arrested in 1977 by the Kenyan government when this novel was first published. Not surprisingly, it was similarly minded American writers like Baldwin and Morrison who were strong protesters of his arrest.
  

  The true lesson of history was this: that the so-called victims, the poor, the downtrodden, the masses, had always struggled with spears and arrows, with their hands and songs of courage and hope, to end their oppression and exploitation: that they would continue struggling until a human kingdom came: a world in which goodness and beauty and strength and courage would be seen not in how cunning one can be, not in how much power to oppress one possessed, but only in one’s contribution in creating a more humane world…

  
  What can I say; I have too many highlighted passages, too many thoughts, all too jumbled within this distracted brain that I can’t give coherent justice to this great novel. What I do know is that it stands apart in my collection of noteworthy postcolonial African novels.
• 
  Kris

  This is the first book I have read by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and I was swept away by it. Written in 1977, Petals of Blood recreates many of the tensions in Kenya at the time. Although the book is anchored by investigation into the murder of three highly placed Kenyan officials, it is at heart a sweeping exploration of the tensions tearing apart Kenyan society: misplaced quest for wealth, modernity, and power; the continued stranglehold of Western imperialism on Kenyan society; the questions of the responsibility of the state for the community and the individual within the community; and the tensions between modern tensions and an aching for traditions, myths, history.
  
  I found Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's central characters to be well-developed, layered, and moving. The novel can be read on many levels: an indictment of Western imperialism, including through Christianity; an anxious statement of concern over the political and economic path taken by Kenya at the time; an exploration of the wide gap between the faux authenticity of Kenya's past as depicted in tourism and the richness of Kenya's true history, as shown in oral history and myth. Throughout, though, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's focus remains on individuals - the decisions they make; their dreams and aspirations set against their realities; the different paths taken by Kenyans as they negotiate the treacherous landscape of modern West Africa. It's a wonderfully written novel, highly recommended.
• 
  Neal Adolph

  Reading literature that is not written for your eyes is hard as a white man. So many of the narratives that I have encountered in my life, from books to movies to advertising to cultural mythologies, have been developed for me to eat up and enjoy with remarkable ease. It is quite easy for me to make it through the day without encountering much that challenges these narratives. And, even as a gay man, it is easy for me to discover just enough culture through the internet in daily doses of glitter beards and drag queens and tormented smalltown boys to feel like the world is made for me. And so reading something that isn’t written for me is difficult to do.
  
  Ngugi wa Thiong’o doesn’t write for me. He doesn’t write for the presumed white audience, for our silly simplistic liberal views of the world, for our notions of justice and our silly historical guilt as though the guilt itself can justify both our ignorance and the privilege of being ignorant. Ngugi doesn’t give a damn about me. I am nowhere in his literature, I am invisible in his world. I am relegated to a plot device in Fraudsham, to a figure who has no character, no voice, no means of explaining themself. I’m a white man - reading something that wasn’t made for me is difficult because I’m so used to reading something that is written for me.
  
  Reading something like this is an important act, though - and one of the reasons that I really enjoyed this work is that it decentered me. It, to steal Chakrabarty for a second, provincialized Europe and made Kenya the centre of the universe. I know it just reveals how privileged I am when I say this, but Ngugi wa Thiong’o startled me by putting black people - his own people - at the centre of the universe. In the process he made me realize that I, in addition to reading more books by women, I must also read more books by people of colour. By people from different regions. I must read from literary cannons that I have never learned enough about.
  
  Coming to this realization has, of course, been a long process, and it would be foolish of me to suggest that Ngugi has led me to this realization on his own. I’ve been working on adding to my shelves books from parts of the world that confound me, parts of the world that I don’t understand - regions inhabited by the billions in individual humans who have amazing stories and histories and mythologies and frustrations and joys to share which have no relation to my own or which, by my sheltered ignorance,are hidden from my small world.
  
  To this end I am glad that this is not the first of Ngugi’s books I have read, and I hope that it isn’t the only book by him that you will read (because I do think you should read this book). About four years ago I read A Grain of Wheat - which was my first book of literature from Africa written by a black African. It was a revelation to me at the time. Brilliant, intelligent, incisive, and powerful. There, as in Petals of Blood, Ngugi is dedicated to splaying open the body politic of his nation and its history. He talks about colonialism, he talks about neo-colonialism, he talks about racism, he talks about misogyny, he talks about corruption - he takes the structures of power in the world around him and reveals just how they are created and just how they reinforce themselves.
  
  Petals of Blood, though, is very different from A Grain of Wheat.
  
  Here, rather than talking about the Mau Mau Rebellion and Kenya’s incredible efforts to overcome the binds of British colonial oppression he takes his final theme of injustice and expands it into a book that is historical. He does it well, with a small but effective cast of characters - Wanja, Munira, Abdulla, Karega - all of whom have been displaced by the new independence of Kenya, and all of whom have found some sort of refuge in Ilmorog. All of whom are, at the outset of the book, suspected of murdering prominent Kenyans - the murder is the conceit which makes the story possible, but the important parts of the story, the powerful moments, are totally separate from this murder.
  
  Ilmorog becomes New Ilmorog. This transformation is fascinating, and essential, and I don’t wish to spoil it, but it hurtles forward without any level of local control and stained by the blood of corruption. It is that age-old African theme of tradition combatting modernity, and potentially losing. But Ngugi isn’t quite so thin in his thematic development to leave it there - he is a worldly man, educated, careful in his regard and precise in his admiration for justice. He sees things which are impossible to see to somebody equipped only with a frustrated anti-Colonialism. He sees things which show the great shame and sham of the post-Colonial era of African history. It is no wonder, then, that he has spent so much of his life in exile to his home land, or in prison (I can only imagine the pain of this experience for a man whose writing reveals his great love for the Kenyan landscape).
  
  Speaking of his writing, it is worth noting that Ngugi writes with incredible clarity and power, with spiked declarative phrases. He dawdles perhaps too long on ideas and descriptions and thoughts and thought processes for his characters, but they push forward. Revelation after revelation - the awakening of a human to disappointment and corruption and the potential for joy. It is tiring for the reader - it makes picking up the book a daunting task. At times the book feels like an essay in novel format. Perhaps it is.
  
  Perhaps that is where its two biggest weaknesses pop up. The first I have previously mentioned - that his original conceit - the murders - isn’t really all that important a plot device, though it does, in the end, help reveal more about one of the four suspects. The second is that all four suspects, and, indeed, all of the major characters in the novel, really are only ideas rather than characters. I wonder if I can explain this well, but I’m not sure I can say it any other way than this - its kind of the difference between an Alice Munro character as compared to a Margaret Atwood character. Atwood’s characters feel two-dimensional by comparison to Munro’s, whose numerous figures feel more human in their desires and disappointments. Ngugi straddles that closeness to humanity much better than Atwood has (as far as I can tell, anyways), but he doesn’t quite cross the fence. It is too bad - the characters are good but they feel like they are themselves devices for Ngugi to share his ideas about Kenya after it had wrestled its independence. Maybe that is their point. Maybe that is Ngugi’s approach to writing. But I wonder if the fictional aspect of his essays in novel form suffer as a result.
  
  It doesn’t suffer too much though. This is a fantastic piece of work, which demands attention. An incisive condemnation of power, its corruption, and the ways in which its many invasive tentacles crawl into our lives.
• 
  A. Raca

  "Başka bir dünya, yeni bir dünya! Gerçekten olabilir miydi? Mümkün müydü?"
  
  Çok alışık olduğum diyarlar değil, belki bu sebepten içine girmekte zorlandım. Bir olayı (cinayet?) 4 kişinin gözünden okurken arka planda da sömürgecilik etkilerini görüyoruz.
  
  Munira sana gıcığım.
• 
  K.J. Charles

  Not really a murder mystery though it is set around a triple murder. This is a sprawling, intense, excoriating epic of post-independence Kenya for which its author was arrested by the Kenyan government. It pulls no punches in the depiction of post-colonial capitalism: greed and corruption holding a whole society to ransom; the agony of false hopes and ever-destroyed optimism, the lost potential of the poor, the endless abuse of women, and the way that everyone must choose between being abused or abuser, or more likely be both.
  
  Racism and colonialism are both shown to have created this mess, but it's hard not to conclude that there is also a very deep problem with human beings in general. A bleak read with a few very faint glimmers of hope.
• 
  Vasilis Philologist

  Μία πόρνη, ένας δάσκαλος, ένας συνδικαλιστής και ένας έκπτωτος αντάρτης υφαίνουν εις τετραπλούν την μακροσκελέστατη πλοκή με φόντο το λυκαυγές της μετα-αποικιοκρατίας στην Κένυα. Μέσα από τις ζωές τους οι οποίες άλλοτε μπλέκονται σαν νήματα κουρελιασμένης φορεσιάς και άλλοτε σαν ιδρωμένα σώματα γεμάτα σκοτωμένη και ένοχη ηδονή, σαστίζουμε με τον άθλο του Θιόνγκο στο να δημιουργήσει ένα σύμπαν με τέσσερις αυθύπαρκτους χαρακτήρες με ηθικό και ψυχικό βάθος που θα ζήλευαν πολλοί (σύγχρονοι και μη) καταξιωμένοι συγγραφείς.
  
  Αν κάποιος ξεπεράσει την προφανή (βλέπε βιογραφικά συγγραφέα) αντικαπιταλιστική στράτευση, θα απολαύσει και θα δακρύσει συνάμα με τη σκιαγράφηση της διαφθοράς, των διαψευσμένων ονείρων, της «ανώτερης» λευκής φυλής αλλά και της έγχρωμης μπουρζουαζίας που παίρνει τα ηνία και στέκεται επάξιος τύραννος με αγγλοσαξονικ�� παιδεία.
  
  Το μικρό πρωτόγονο χωριό Ίλμορογκ «προοδεύει», εκβιομηχανίζεται και σαπίζει από τον οπορτουνισμό και τον εκφυλισμό κάθε ηθικής αξίας. Είναι η μικρογραφία της ίδιας της Κένυας και της μετάβασης από τον ζυγό της Γηραιάς Αλβιώνας στο απαρτχάιντ μεταξύ έγχρωμων αυτή τη φορά, αλλά και στο διγλωσσικό σχίσμα μεταξύ της καθαρής γλώσσας και των διαλέκτων των προλετάριων.
  
  Ξεκινώντας ως αφρικανικό αστυνομικό νουάρ, καταλήγει λογοτεχνικό διαμάντι το οποίο με έναν εύστοχο και διόλου γλυκανάλατο λυρισμό, λειαίνει τις άκρες που θα μπορούσαν να το καταστήσουν πεζό και φλύαρο μανιφέστο. Εξαιρώντας κάποιες κουραστικές εγκιβωτισμένες αφηγήσεις, έχουμε ένα λογοτεχνικό διαμάντι διόλου ακατέργαστο, αφού η δύναμη, η γλαφυρότητα στις περιγραφές και η σκληρότητα των διαλογικών κομματιών, σε κάνει να πιστέψεις ότι βρίσκεσαι κατάκοπος και πληγωμένος σε έναν αφρικανικό λόφο, αγναντεύοντας το μούχρωμα του ηλιοβασιλέματος στα άγονα εδάφη της κενυατικής ενδοχώρας.
  
  Ένα αριστούργημα που στη χώρα μας προφανώς δεν ήταν αρκετά ινσταγκραμικό για να πρωταγωνιστήσει σε φωτογραφίες και giveaways…Fun fact ότι ο (παρ’ ολίγον νομπελίστας) Θιόνγκο έχει εγκαταλείψει τη συγγραφή στην αγγλική γλώσσα και πλέον χρησιμοποιεί τη μητρική του διάλεκτο, με προφανές εκδοτικό και οικονομικό κόστος, καθιστώντας μας σαφή την εναντίωσή του στα περί περί ισχυρών και ασθενών γλωσσών.
• 
  Emily

  Το βιβλίο ξεκινά με ένα τριπλό φόνο και τελειώνει, μετά από 600 περίπου σελίδες, με την αποκάλυψη του ενόχου.
  Ήταν όμως ένοχος; Ήταν ο πραγματικός ένοχος;
  Ανάμεσα στις πρώτες και τις τελευταίες σελίδες παρελαύνει όλη η ιστορία της Κένυας, από τον απελευθερωτικό αγώνα των Μάου Μάου, της δεκαετίας του '50, μέχρι αρκετά χρόνια μετά την ανεξαρτητοποίηση της χώρας από τη βρετανική "φροντίδα".
  Η αιματοχυσία εκείνου του αγώνα (32 λευκοί και χιλιάδες Κικούγιου, η κυριότερη εθνότητα της Κένυας) έβαλε τέλος στη βρετανική αποικιοκρατία και άφησε τη χώρα να βρει το δρόμο της, κάτι το οποίο στην πράξη δεν αποδείχτηκε πολύ εύκολο.
  Πολύ ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο, σχετικά δύσκολο στο διάβασμα του για κάποιον που δεν έχει ιδέα από Αφρική.
  Όλα τα θέματα που θίγει όμως (και είναι αρκετά) έχουν σημαντικές ομοιότητες με τα θέματα που προβληματίζουν κάθε κοινωνία. Η πολιτική διαφθορά, η πολιτική ως πετυχημένο και προσοδοφόρο επάγγελμα, η εκπαίδευση και η αφύπνιση των λαών, οι ποικίλες διαψεύσεις... Γραμμένο πριν 40 χρόνια, διατηρεί την επικαιρότητα του, ξεφεύγοντας από τα σύνορα της Κένυας.
  
  Για τον πόλεμο των Μάου Μάου και μερικά στοιχεία για την ιστορία της Κένυας βρήκα σε άρθρο της Καθημερινής (Κόσμος 7/4/2013 γραμμένο από τον κ. Αστέρη Χουλιαρά).
  Αποτελεί μεγάλη παρηγοριά να υπάρχουν εκδοτικοί οίκοι που επιλέγουν τη γνωριμία με συγγραφείς από όλο τον κόσμο και ιδιαίτερα από χώρες πολύ λίγο γνωστές στο μέσο αναγνώστη.
  Αν σκεφτούμε την πλημμυρίδα εκδόσεων και επανεκδόσεων τίτλων και εξωφύλλων με εκείνα τα θλιβερά γυναικεία πρόσωπα, τόσο απαράλλαχτα να ατενίζουν φεγγάρια, βαλίτσες, θάλασσες, δέντρα, καράβια κλπ., τότε, ίσως υπάρχει ελπίδα ακόμα.
  Πολύ όμορφο το εξώφυλλο από την ομάδα The Zyme, δημιουργημένη από τον Μπάμπη Τουγλή. Ένα ακόμα συν του εκδοτικού οίκου.
• 
  Radu Popovici

  3,5 *
• 
  Elena Sala

  PETALS OF BLOOD (first published in 1977) is a novel about the history of Kenya after independence. Formerly under British rule, the Mau Mau (also known as the Kenya Land Freedom Army), waged a war against the powerful colonial government and, against all odds, won. The Mau Mau were peasants who fought bravely for their land, for the dispossessed, for their culture. In the end they betrayed their people: they became a corrupt political clique who exploited the peasants and workers, putting the interests of foreign capital first, in a cruel version of neocolonialism.
  
  PETALS OF BLOOD is set in a place called Ilmorog, a barren, drought stricken land of poor peasants and herders. Everyone is leaving Ilmorog, there is no future in that miserable village. The novel revolves around four characters: three men-Munira, Abdulla, Kagera- and a woman- Wanja. At the beginning the three men are arrested in connection with the murder of three petty, corrupt, black businessmen. Wanja is in hospital fighting for her life. Munira is the most important character: he comes from a landowning family and he represents the middle class. He is a schoolteacher who considers himself a failure and struggles hard to fit into his community. The whole narrative is based on Munira's scattered reminiscences and broodings. Munira tells his own story and the story of his family, also the story of Abdulla, a one-legged former freedom fighter during the wars of independence turned merchant. Abdulla is now reduced to beggary. We also learn about Kagera, formerly a promising student, now an activist and revolutionary. Then, there is the story of Wanja, a tormented woman who became a prostitute and then, a rather cynical brothel madam.
  
  This novel was written originally in Gīkùyū so that the peasants about whom the author was writing about could read his books. For a while, I found the narrative voice hard to follow; Ngugi makes no concessions for his non-African readers. Most disturbing though, were some episodes containing gratuitous depiction of sexual violence against women. Despite these issues, I believe PETALS OF BLOOD remains a great history lesson, the story of Kenya's struggle with neocolonialism, the story of a country betrayed by its new ruling class but which, nevertheless, Ngugi hopes, will keep on fighting against oppression and ignorance.
  
  3.5 🌟
• 
  Alex

  Petals of Blood comes up in discussions about the most important African novels of the 20th century. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (
  pronunciation - if you want to pick one name, Ngũgĩ is correct) was a disciple of
  Chinua Achebe's, until they had a violent falling out over philosophy: Ngũgĩ decided to stop writing in English, switching to his native Kenyan language of Gikuyu. African language for African people. Achebe had a broader audience in mind. 1977's Petals of Blood was Ngũgĩ's final English work.
  
  It's a deep and intense read. Its four lead characters - weak schoolteacher Munira, activist Karega, shopkeeper and donkey aficionado Abdulla, and the woman they're all in love with, Wanja - are archetypical. One or more of them may be murderers, and the book is a mystery: who has killed three evil businessmen? The story flashes back to fill us in.
  
  Ngũgĩ's writing can be frustratingly coy. A character returns: "Five years since he went away," but you don't find out for ten pages who "he" even is. Why the obfuscation, dude? I found it difficult: it was hard to lose myself in the book, even though the plot was often exciting.
  
  There's a Dickensian sort of coincidence at work. Characters turn out to be connected in surprisingly intimate ways. (Or maybe it's not so much Dickensian as Agatha Christie-an.)
  
  Ngũgĩ carefully shows the dismantling of African culture: first by European colonialism, then by the rebels who fought it, as they take power and are in turn corrupted. The road comes, and then the banks come, and the villages never have any chance at all. This is depressing. Ngũgĩ is depressed:

  Imaginative literature [of Africa] was not much different: the authors described the conditions correctly: they seemed able to reflect accurately the contemporary situation of fear, oppressions and deprivation: but thereafter they led him down the paths of pessimism, obscurity and mysticism: was there no way out except cynicism? Were people helpless victims?

  He lays out three possible paths forward: business, socialist activism, and violence, personified by Wanja, Karega and Munira respectively. (If there's a fourth way I missed it.) I get the impression that some combination of strategies may be his best guess for success. Dismissed entirely is the idea of staying out of it. "If you would learn look about you," he warns: "Choose your side."
  
• 
  Marko K.

  Roman Krvave latice je smešten u Keniju za vreme turbulentnih ’50-ih godina, a interesantno je da je roman bio zabranjen kada je izašao, i da je sam pisac završio u zatvoru jer ga je napisao. Zašto je ovaj roman toliko skandalozan? Elem, roman počinje jednim ubistvom, tako da se stiče utisak da je u pitanju samo jedan triler. Međutim, već u drugom poglavlju pisac nas vodi neko vreme unazad, kada upoznajemo glavne aktere ovog romana. Tu je Munira, protagonista romana koji dolazi u selo Ilmorog u Keniji da radi kao učitelj u seoskoj školi. Stanovnici ovog sela ga isprva ne doživljavaju ozbiljno i veruju da će da ode iz sela kao i svaki prethodni učitelj, međutim Munira u sebi nosi nešto što drugi ljudi ne nose. Tu je i Vandža, devojka koja je po svakom principu drugačija. Ona je zavodnica ali i vrlo buntovna devojka – na momente biznismenka, na momente prostitutka. Na kraju, tu je i Karega, momak koji je nadahnut politikom i revolucionarnim idejama.
  
  Roman se odigrava u trenutku kada se u Keniji dešavaju opasne političke promene. Pre svega tu je industrionalizacija malih sela, stvaranje firmi i novih poslova, ali s druge strane tu je i Mau Mau revolucija, odnosno grupa ljudi koja se bori da vrati Keniju njenim stanovnicima, a ne belcima. Ovo je glavna podela u romanu – podela na belce koji su tu došli da pruže Keniji šansu da zaradi dok im je u glavnom interesu da sami zarade, i na crnce koji će opet glumiti robove belcima, i to u sopstvenoj državi. S druge strane tu je podela na crnce koji vole Keniju i žele je da bude ista kao što je bila pre, i da se osećaju sigurno i slobodno u sopstvenoj državi, i na one koji su ipak na strani belaca jer su im obećali visoke pozicije i dosta novca.
  
  Iz ovoga se može zaključiti da industrijalizacija jedne države nije glavna tema ovog romana, već i korupcija. Korupcija među sopstvenom državom i među sopstvenim narodom. Korupcija koja tera ljude da okrenu leđa svojima. Va Tiongo opisuje ovo na jedan jako dobar način, a sam momenat industrijalizacije i Mau Mau revolucije je svepriisutan u romanu, od početka do kraja. Takođe, na jedan jako upečatljiv način možemo osetiti na koji način se Kenija menja, i kako to utiče na ljude koji tamo žive. Zatvaranje uličnih poslova preko kojih su stariji seljani zarađivali kako bi se tu izgradio put koji će da poverzuje dva grada i zatvaranje prodavnica kako bi se otvorile novije prodavnice samo su neki primeri kako se to zaista i dešavalo tamo.
  
  Osim ovih bitnih tema, Va Tiongo je zaista osmislio jedan interesantan roman. Na momente zna da bude monoton, posebno treća četvrtina romana, ali ga kraj zaista izvlači. Neki likovi su zaista lepo osmišljeni i razrađeni, dok je za druge ipak trebalo možda malo više prostora. U svakom slučaju, ovo nije roman koji će se svima dopasti, ali ukoliko volite političke romane, ili romane koji pokazuju kako je tamo negde daleko, ili na kraju krajeva romane koji će Vas naučiti nešto novo, onda pokušajte da pročitae Krvave latice.
  
  
• 
  Aubrey

  How, now, how could the young, the bright and the hopeful deteriorate so? Was there no way of using their energies and dreams to a purpose higher than the bottle, the juke-box and sickness on a cement floor?
  
  Could property, wealth, status, religion, plus education not hold a family together?

  In less than a month, two Nobel Prize for Lit winners will be announced, and if neither of them is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, I won't be surprised, but I will be sorely disappointed. He is an author who writes the way I would write if I had the gumption for it, but thank the gods that Ngũgĩ has it and not me, if only due to the comparative plethora of white women authors of repute when compared to black authors as a whole. Detractors will accuse sections of this of pontification and digression, but if they're not saying the same thing about Hugo, it's impossible to take them seriously. In these days when white liberals quibble about socialism and democratic socialism and communism, Ngũgĩ goes to the roots of a postcolonial time and portrays the mechanisms of malaise of a black bourgeoisie so accurately and so scathingly that he is thrown in jail for his pains. Yes, this is a murder mystery. The question, though, is not who committed the murders, but one of the murders, rapes, pillaging, and obsequious sanctifying that sacrificed many before three golden calves, and a nation that criminalized only the act of finally overthrowing said idols.

  'This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?' inquired Ruoro.
  It was Muturi who answered.
  'You forget that in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use. It was also plenty, you need not have beaten one yard over and over again.[']
  
  Pity would be no more
  If we did not make somebody Poor.
  
  —William Blake

  This work is no
  Wizard of the Crow, and for all that the more contemporary work outweighs PoB by a good three hundred pages, this work makes for a more difficult progression. Here are epic journeys through time and space as the underpinnings of representative democracy were violated in every way imaginable, save for perhaps the obscene proliferation of casinos and the circumspect murder of owners of oil deposits, but then again, why delve into such specifics when the tourism industry and landed agricultural corporations accomplish nearly the same? This is not a story for those in favor of happy endings or easy solutions or communal political action to be treated as the bugaboo that the US loves to parade around in order to justify its legalized slavery and glorified settler state. I will say, though, that the ending, however harrowing, is indeed hopeful: it is simply a fire and brimstone, French Revolution sort, where if one doesn't heeds the trends of dehumanization and seek to actively reverse them soon enough, it'll be the reversal of the attachment of one's head to one's shoulders that occurs instead.

  [W]ho was better off, the peasant in a forgotten village or the city dweller thrown onto these rubbish heaps they called locations?
  
  God save the Queen, they sang after every massacre and then went to church for blessings and cleansing: it had always fallen to the priest to ordain human sacrifice's to appease every dominant God in history.

  It's likely that I'm going to read Ngũgĩ's entire bibliography at some point, which offers a nice counterpoint to my ongoing devotion to Woolf. Much as I love the woman, her perspective of the world and its people was incontrovertibly limited, and my committing to reading the works of someone steeped in practically the utmost Other that figures in Woolfian works is almost a necessity in my line of autodidactic pursuit. Again, it would be a great disappointment if Ngũgĩ didn't win one of this year's proclaimed awards, but he is still living, and I can't say that I can't think of a number of others who would be more than worthy, as well as break up the tedium of the still rather inviolate ivory tower of winners. I suppose Ngũgĩ has simply won a place close to my heart, enough that I can comfortably declare him a favorite without also declaring any single one of his works to be of the same individually favored caliber. I'm sure I'll find one to declare as such as I continue through the Ngũgĩ canon, but for now, I'm just thrilled to find something I love that was written by someone who loves literature as I do. That is likely the highest praise I can give to a writer who yet lives.
  

  He held Sembene Ousmane's novel,
  God's Bits of Wood, in his hands but he was not reading much.
  
  You, who will seek the truth about words emitted by a voice, look first for the body behind the voice. The voice merely rationalises the needs, whims, caprices, of its owner, the master. Better therefore to know the master in whose service the intellect is and you'll be able to properly evaluate the import and imagery of his utterances. You serve the people who struggle; or you serve those who rob the people. In a situation of the robber and the robbed, in a situation in which the old man of the sea is sitting on Sindbad, there can be no neutral history and politics. If you would learn look about you: choose your side.
• 
  Jeyasivananth

  At the outset, it is a murder fiction. The plot unravels with an ongoing investigation of the triple murder of three socially eminent men Kimeria, Chui, and Mzigo. The investigation leads us to a journey into the past; the past of not just the prime accused Karera and Munira but also the victims Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo, and the past of Africa itself. Set in nascent Kenya, the novel is a pungent criticism of the erstwhile European imperialism and its cankerous impact on the African nation. It is also a stirring portrayal of continuing ethical, cultural, and political decay of a nation under neocolonialism. The language is peppered with African oral literature while faithfully registering their humble and contented lifestyle. It turns acerbic while rebuking the follies of capitalism, morality, history, religion, urbanization, and cultural tourism. The major characters, each fettered to a festering wound of the past, each gnawed by their inner conflicts grope to discover hope and answers in a nation moving towards dystopia. Thiong'O deftly analyses different themes through the interior monologues of the different characters. Through Wanja he explores the dubiousness of morality, through Munira he denounces the hypocrisy of religion, through Karera he chides the shallowness of a British-modeled education system, through Abdullah he exposes the futility and disillusionment of war. Thus in resonating the pain and plight of all colonized nations, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood is undoubtedly one of the classics of postcolonial literature.
• 
  Yuri Sharon

  This is a rather difficult book to read for several, conflicting reasons. Firstly, it will make any decent person angry. After all the sacrifices made by ordinary Kenyans to rid themselves of the colonial masters they were then subjected by their own people – politicians in the service of international capital. Secondly (and, as I said, conflictingly) it is difficult to read because it too often lapses into extended polemic. Frankly, it preaches to a degree that is simply tedious.
  Ngugi wa Thiong’o has a big, deserved reputation for having upset Kenyan governments for decades. I understand his desire to explain, in detail, what he sees as wrong with his country – but style is also important and I believe his repetitiveness works against him.
  
• 
  Dora Okeyo

  Ngugi's writing commands attention.
  This book was published in 1977 but the story was written within seven years pre-publication set in an imaginary town of Ilmorog along the Trans-Africa highway.
  
  The story revolves around four main characters: Munira, Abdulla, Karega, and Wanja all of whom meet in Ilmorog, and find themselves caught up in the failed promises of post independence in Kenya. Munira is a teacher who is posted to the school and struggles to get the basics including keeping the pupils in school. Abdulla is a shopkeeper with a stump, he has a donkey that eats more than the goats and cattle in Ilmorog and the people want to do away with it, but Abdulla cannot let go of his companion. It is the first donkey the people have seen in that place.
  Karega is drawn to Ilmorog, and like Munira he was expelled from one of the best boy schools in the country called Siriana. Munira appoints him as a teacher in the school and together they bring hope to the pupils in the school.
  Then there is Wanja, a beautiful woman who is at the center of it all, she returns home to start over and is soon the attraction of the town, but with time Munira finds that she is not just an attraction in Ilmorog but also in the city from Lawyers to Member of Parliaments.
  
  Ilmorog has an MP, but their roads are poor and no one wants to visit their small town, but when a drought hits them, they organize a troop and walk all the way to the city to meet their representative, but once there they realize that no one is out to help them and so they return disillusioned and hurt that their own MP did not care about the drought or offer any help or mercy regarding their dilemma.
  
  This opens up the world to their plight and soon investors find their way into the town, roads, a police post, businesses and the face of Ilmorog changes. But the lack of concern they experienced at the city, haunts them. You have these common people who hoped that after they fought for independence, they would have leaders who would cater to their needs. Karega asks at some point, how long shall our people continue to sweat so that a few, a given few, might keep a thousand dollars in the bank of the one monster god that for four hundred years had ravished a continent?
  
  Petals of Blood is written in form of a reminisce. Munira looks back at life in Ilmorog and how the changing times all led up to arson, and the murder of three famous businessmen and officials: Chui, Kimeria and Mzigo. It's divided into four parts each an attempt at divulging what led to the murder and who committed the crime and why. I'll say this is not a book for the faint hearted. Ngugi depicts a society destroyed by their own children. Like Wanja says it is 'eat or you are eaten,' and the release of the book is very symbolic. It's Ngugi's way of saying, 'look at what Kenya has become,' while asking "what were we fighting for? What use was Mau Mau? What happened to living as one in spite of being of different tribes?"
  
  The prose is mixed with Biblical references and Shakespearean quotes aimed at bringing the irony of fully embracing the British ways and discarding the African customs, but also showing how Kenyans who came to power used the same to oppress their own all for the sake of wealth.
  
  I started by saying that Ngugi's writing commands attention, and with this book though he points out the greed that is destroying Kenya, he is also pointing out that there are a few who still believe in what is right, whose idea of Uhuru/Freedom has not been tarnished. It is these few who are either killed for being the light, or find themselves living as bystanders only to resort to extreme measures that would have society question their sanity.
• 
  Moth

  Fabula dosta zamršena ocrtava tako i kompleksan odnos među likovima gdje je život Munire, direktora škole isprepleten sa konobaricom Vandžom, vječnim buntovnikom, učiteljom a poslije i sindikalnim funkcionerom Karagom i trgovcem Abdulom, koji se u prošlosti borio kao heroj za nezavisnost Kenije. Njih sumnjiče za ubistvo direktora lokalne pivare Tengeta, no, taj „detektivski“ zaplet je u pozadini jednog postkolonijalnog procesa, tranzicije kroz koji prolazi Kenija, kao i sve druge afričke zemlje koje su ostavljene „napola“, niti su evropeizirane do kraja, niti su zadržale svoj plemenski identitet. Običnim ljudima nije preostalo ništa drugo do borba protiv smrtonosne eksploatacije koju sprovode zajedno stranci i naglo, preko noći obogaćeni Afrikanci.
  „I, dok pada kiša i rastu cvjetovi krvavih latica, kakvi će biti njihovi plodovi?“
  
• 
  Sara Salem

  Masterpiece. He shows the slow encroachment of a whole range of forces from capitalism to 'modernity' post-independence in Kenya and does it while implicitly critiquing almost every ideological position that can be taken in such a context.
• 
  Laura

  Oh good grief I am DNFing this - I think that is the correct abbreviation here on Goodreads. It's boring, although I am sure very, very educational.
• 
  Carmen

  Perhaps...perhaps this or that...what I might have done or might not have done...these things we always turn over in our minds at the post mortem of a deed which cannot now be undone. Peace, my soul. But how can I, a mortal, help my heart's fluttering, I who was a priviled witness of the growth of Ilmorog from its beginnings in rain and drought to the present flowering in petals of blood?
• 
  Derek

  This book shook me up when I read it three decades ago. It led me to to read other fantastic Ngugi novels, and other African novelists. It could be a little didactic, but that was okay. I probably needed to know how ideology helped shape independence movements and post colonial conflicts. The book (and Grain of Wheat) probably also led me to study African history a bit, and to teach a little African history over the years. Ngugi was also a point of reference when I made Kenyan and Tanzanian college roommates and friends. In general, Ngugi helped me challenge many nostalgic assumptions I had about empire and its legacy. Previously, I had only encountered works by white Africans, works like Out of Africa and Flame Trees of Thika and Cry the Beloved Country. I saw Africa from my the perspective of my well-intentioned white mother, who had once lived briefly in what was then a British colony, Southern Rhodesia. Perhaps the book had something to do with my eventual marriage to an African. One never knows how great literature works on our emotional lives. After three decades, it’s definitely time to return to Ngugi.
• 
  Michael

  This is one of the first Ngugi books I read and I have to admit I enjoyed his earlier work about the Mau Mau rebellion more as I was reading it. However, looking back I see the brilliance of Petals of Blood. This work takes incredible courage. I was visiting Kenya when he first came back after decades of exile and he was attacked by thugs. To take on the corrupt post-independence regime and not just create a mythology about the heroes of independence is what makes Ngugi a master. I wish an American writer in the early years after our independence could have exposed our government with this much passion.
• 
  Simon

  Think of it as "Grapes of Wrath" set in Kenya. It's a highly political novel, chastising imperialism, capitalism, and corruption in Kenya, written by an author with Marxist leanings. Nevertheless, the interweaving of four people's stories leaves room for different perspectives, and the novel never descends to the level of a manifesto. I couldn't stop comparing Petals of Blood to Grapes of Wrath though, and I must plainly say that Steinbeck, taking more time to unfold a narrower story, delivers peasants' plight under capitalism much more powerful and harrowing than does Ngugi.
• 
  Mohamed

  رواية مملة جدا لم استطع انهائها حيث الكاتب كاره للرأسمالية ومحب للاشتراكية وكاره لكل ما هو أبيض وعاشق لكل ما هو أسود
  بالإضافة إلى أن الكاتب لديه القدرة أن يعيد ويزيد في نفس الكلام عن الحلم الافريقي والرجل الأبيض البغيض وأتباعهم من الخونة الأفارقة الذين باعوا أنفسهم من أجل السلطة
  
• 
  Aaron

  This was a tough read. Very wordy.
• 
  Aylin

  Baslardaki gizem havasi, tekrarlayan sahneler baslarda yordu. Kitabin ikinci yarisina kadar ittirerek okudum. Munira'nin surekli dilinde dolasan "ah ne dram" lafinin altini anlatimla cok dolduramamis gibiydi yazar. Sanki kitabin baslarinda o yasanan dramlari biz cok anlayamadik. Sonlara dogru cozuldu. Anlatimda bir aksaklik oldugunu dusundum. Genel olarak Afrika edebiyatindan okudugum kitaplarda bunu goruyorum. O kadar cok travma yasamislar ki anlatirken bunu milletin anlayacagi gibi suslemeye gerek duymuyolar. Yazdiklarimiz kurgu degil, gercek. O yuzden bunlarin anlatim teknikleriyle guclendirilmelerine ihtiyac yok gibi bir durus sergiliyorlar sanki. Olay akisi insa etmekten cok, ugradiklari haksizlik karsisindaki serzenislerini okura iletmek icin yaziyorlar. Bu kitapta da olay akisi cok yavas ilerlerken bol bol ic ses okuduk. Karakterlerin isyanini, ofkesini, hayal kirikliklarini yansitmak icin ugrasmis gibiydi yazar. Bir noktaya kadar agir ilerledi ama sevdim ben.
• 
  Margaret Butler

  I didn't remember the plot of this novel at all from my first reading in 1978. It shows the destructive corruption of colonialism and Neo-colonialism. A group of 24 Lewis and Clark students spent 5 months together studying politics, systems, and history. Every single one of us left thinking that capitalist "development" was hurting the people and land in Kenya. (that included the oil magnate's daughter. This book shows in stark and brutal detail what we came to understand about exploitative systems that benefit the rich of the colonizing countries and a small group of the colonized. It's a very powerful book and very sad, when I think how things have not improved in the 40 years since we were there. In fact, the stealing of African resources by outsiders continues unabated.