Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo


Devil on the Cross
Title : Devil on the Cross
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0435908448
ISBN-10 : 9780435908447
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 256
Publication : First published January 1, 1980

This remarkable and symbolic novel centers on Wariinga's tragedy and uses it to tell a story of contemporary Kenya.


Devil on the Cross Reviews


  • Will

    Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross is a fascinating work of political literature, a call for Kenyans to wake up to what neocolonial capitalism had done to their supposedly independent country. Devil on the Cross is a deceptively complex, yet clear novel with one political goal: the true independence of Kenya from Western economic and cultural domination.

    Many sensible readers don't seem to like this novel. A common critique goes like this: Devil on the Cross is a simple novel with an obvious goal, so it shouldn't be lauded as groundbreaking literature.

    1. Most of main characters are archetypes: the evil and horny capitalist big bosses, the virtuous worker sparking revolution, the small thief with bigger nefarious aspirations, the international white capitalist kingpins, the soft scholar, the virtuous woman who believes that good will triumph.

    2. The allegories are obvious: Rich men host a national competition to crown seven "Experts in Theft and Robbery". Several men give speeches extolling how they exploit workers, rural people, and women to the raucous applause of the audience. A young man searches to find the right mix of Kenyan instruments to compose a tune that will unite all Kenyans in one struggle. A young, studious poor woman is led astray by a rich old man, who turns her off her studies and then abandons her when she becomes pregnant. It's a novel of dichotomies, of good vs. evil and rich vs. poor.

    3. The lessons are clear: Kenyan independence was shallow. As Frantz Fanon put it, the new leaders of many African states wore white masks over their black skin to reassure the colonial powers that their citizens' assets were safe. Kenyans must break free from this new, less obvious, but just as harmful form of colonial oppression. By joining together, the oppressed can throw off the yoke of the new Kenyan capitalists and their international backers. But the path forward won't be easy.

    But these supposed critiques are exactly what makes Devil on the Cross a fantastic political novel. The goal of a political novel is to take a stand, to expose evildoers, to point out what is Good. Its goal is to convince the reader that there must be change and that it can't wait. Devil on the Cross is obvious, clear, and entertaining, and that's why it's great – and effective.

    Ngũgĩ, the master behind Decolonizing the Mind and The River Between, is a brilliant political writer. He understands the power of simple, direct words. Almost the entire book is a series of speeches and parables told from various perspectives. Ngũgĩ guides the reader through complex topics like international capitalism and gender inequality by letting the characters tell their own stories. These stories are grounded in experiences that everyday Kenyans (and readers in the West) can understand and analyze without too much difficulty. What's a better way to highlight sexual harassment in the workplace than listening to a survivor tell her story and then connect it to a wider, global problem? Through Ngũgĩ, ordinary people talk to ordinary people.

    Throughout his works, Ngũgĩ has consistently made the point that literature can be used to dismantle oppression. But to realize this lofty goal, literature has to be clear and written with the target audience in mind. That's why he wrote this novel (and all of his subsequent works) in Gikuyu, the vernacular language of the people he wanted to reach, his people.

    Ngũgĩ was a playwright, and Devil on the Cross also borrows from a strong oral tradition. Songs, parables, and repetition, classic hallmarks of oral literature, are found everywhere, reflecting an oral tradition that is familiar to his Gikuyu audience. Ngũgĩ recognizes that the political awakening of a people is only possible through using speech and argument well. Content is not enough; form matters.

    Devil on the Cross should be handed out as a companion to every textbook on postcolonial Africa. Because of its clarity, Ngũgĩ's novel is an excellent introduction to the horrors of unrestrained capitalism for an intelligent lay audience. That's why it's a classic of Kenyan literature and why it should be a classic of world literature, too.

  • Mary Emily O'Hara

    January: Novel number two for my African Lit class. This one is my favorite so far- politically enraged and theatrical, it utilizes magical realist-esque shifts in character and context, jumping in and out of reality and all over the African map. Written on toilet paper while Ngugi was in jail.

    April: Ok- a few months an two research projects on Ngugi later, I can say that this book now holds a place in my personal canon of radical literature. Devil on the Cross is just incredible. Form and style interact with context and intent to create a world in which Western capitalism and religion are dissected and rejected and traditional Gikuyu language and belief systems slowly enter the mind like rainwater seeping through the wall of a tent. What Ngugi does to halt the Kenyan slide into Western-style greed is genius. It's no wonder that this book helped contribute to his eternal exile and political rejection. Devil on the Cross is too powerful an indictment and too thrilling a spiritual call to arms- it incites a disobliging defensiveness in the moneyed classes and a mania of dutiful resistance in the rest of us. Totally brilliant!

  • Claudia

    Overall, very interesting read. My only complaint is probably that it seemed reaaaaaaaaaaaally straightforward in its analogies, so much so that it could be predictable; at the same time, I'm not sure that this isn't just my perception as someone who 1) isn't a Gikuyu speaker, 2) is reading it after it's been translated to English, and 3) isn't watching it being acted out (as it's written in a way that very heavily lends itself to being acted out).

    All that said, I still found it very enjoyable and thought-provoking. The most valuable piece for me was seeing neo-colonial capitalism artistically depicted using human characters: a few chapters in, you get testimonies from a number of characters that help the reader understand Wariinga's (and a good number of other characters') predicament. Ngugi also did a surprisingly nice job of conveying the experience of a WOMAN in the midst of the neo-colonial imperialists: he managed to include some of the more salient (and I'd say unifying) experiences of women within global capitalism (I'm not going to mention exact examples because it would give too much away). Toward the end, we even were given a little bit to think about regarding the impact of global capitalism on romantic relationships between people by considering Wariinga's example. I was also VERY shocked by the final chapter because the plot takes a very interesting (and hard to predict turn).

    Overall, an excellent read with tons of quotable moments seeing as the artistic value of Ngugi's writing and excellent depiction of intersectionality is probably what makes this so worthwhile to read. I disagree with the reviews that suggested that this was a book that made sexism something that's simply subordinate to class struggle, as well. The last few chapters of the book make clear that Kenyan Black women's oppression wasn't solely a matter of capitalism, but instead had was a tool that facilitated class oppression (e.g. pointing out that Kenyan men's sexist views of women had contributed to rich men being able to treat women as objects as well). I think to construe this as dismissive of the seriousness of sexism requires one to assume that every woman's most salient experiences with gendered oppression are ones that have nothing to do with class and race. Further, it is assuming that women actually can work AROUND class, when (as this book points out) poor women regularly are available targets for gendered violence BECAUSE of class (e.g. prostitution out of economic necessity creates opportunities for sexual exploitation that don't exist for well-off women; poor women's experience of gendered violence is often treated as consensual because women may stay with abusive men out of economic necessity or may not gain legal protection due to racialized sexist assumptions about who can be a victim).

    I strongly recommend this book to anyone who doesn't grasp how global capitalism impacts people of color (specifically Black people) to reinforce worldwide systems of dominance through seemingly benign means and creates the illusion of consent on the part of the oppressed. I also strongly recommend this book to people who already get it, but maybe don't have the words to describe the experience. Lastly, the book also has some interesting points to think about for those of us coming from less privileged backgrounds who have suddenly gained access to new and hard-to-understand class privilege. This book offers lots of attention-grabbing examples of how it all plays out, even today. I'd also go so far as to say this book has added relevance in the Obama presidential years.

  • Whitlaw Tanyanyiwa Mugwiji

    Devil on the cross is many things to different people. To the feminist, it is a story about a woman who refused to be used and trampled upon and reclaimed her dreams and dignity. To the Marxists it is a fictionalised treatise against capitalism. To the student of politics it is a story of corruption, oppression and mis-governance in post colonial Kenya. To the Pan Africanist it is a story against western cultural domination and a struggle against colonialism betrayed.

    It is a simple and yet complex polemic on the quadruplet evils of colonialism, post independence oppression, capitalism and patriarchy. Ngugi wrote and smuggled Devil on the cross out of prison on a roll of toilet paper, after he had been arrested by the government for writing political plays deemed subversive to the state.

    I was a tiny bit sceptical in the beginning before I knew where the story was going but in the end, I enjoyed the book, although I did not like the ending.

  • Lucas Sierra

    Terminé, luego de una lectura lenta, accidentada (si se me permite el melodramatismo) con esta novela hoy en la tarde. Al final no dejo de sentir que estuve frente a una fábula, un panfleto. Cuando cualquiera de esas dos cosas se ejecuta, debe uno hacerlo con mucha habilidad. Aquí siento una intencionalidad superior al resultado. Un gran propósito, entorpecido por su forma de llevarse a cabo.

    Me alegra, pese a ello, haberla leído. Creo que tiene un puñado de buenos momentos, y volveré a pensar en ella cuando se me plantee aquello de la función social del arte.

  • Cliff M

    What a story. What an ending. But most importantly - what a message (“As far as we peasants are concerned, all our labor goes to fatten Nairobi and the big towns.”).
    I confess I knew nothing about our colonial past in Kenya, and next to nothing (only BBC propaganda) about the Mau-Mau revolution. This story of post-colonial exploitation by the same people who perpetrated colonial oppression and brutal repression has opened my eyes to how things go for all victims / members of empires (British, French, Belgian etc). Instead of flooding the minds of our children at school with all that ‘Tudors and Stuart’s’ crap, we should be teaching them about the reality of ‘empire’ and how 500 million people in Africa live in extreme poverty to this day because the exploitation never stopped.
    Beautiful writing by an amazing African writer. I will be reading a lot more of this ilk.

  • Txe Polon

    Generalmente, las obras que se fundamentan en una tesis ideológica me desagradan por cuanto todo está al servicio de dicha tesis y los personajes se convierten en tipos. En este caso, esta misma sensación de desagrado me ha acompañado a través de la mayoría de las páginas de esta alegoría, pero estaba contrastada por la potencia de las imágenes, la belleza del lenguaje y la presencia de una protagonista femenina que observa para finalmente actuar, con ese final abrupto y sensacional .

  • SalsaAram

    have recently started reading about Africa and have to admit to being fairly ignorant about most African history and literature. Therefor, this review will be somewhat limited since I believe that the characters in this book are all based on cultural and social ideals and thoughts instead of actual “people” like many novels. This book was also written while Thiong’ o was in jail because of a play he wrote about the government. The then vice president of Kenya ordered his arrest. While imprisoned, Thiong’ o wrote this book on toilet paper guards gave him because he had no paper. Thiong’ o writes in his native Kikuyu language and translates it into English himself.
    The book is built around a “Devil’s Feast” where the best robbers and thieves from all around the world will meet in Ilmorog, a fictional city in Kenya, and tell their stories. After the stories are told, the robbers and thieves will then decide who is the greatest of them all. The main character, Wariinga, is a Kenyan woman in her mid 20s who has just been fired by Boss Kihara for not sleeping with him. She also has a child by The Rich Old Man who dumped her after finding out she was pregnant with his child and went back to his wife. This sets the premise of women being used and abused by men in Kenya but also, Warringa seems to the redemptive power of women and the poor of Kenya while most of the men are metaphors for capitalism and western culture, raping and destroying Kenya for its own needs and desires.
    Wariinga decides to return to her hometown, Illmorog. She rides in a bus with 5 other characters that seem to represent other parts of Kenya’s culture: The students who want equality. The professors who are trying to educate and help the poor. The wealthy who are part of the Devil’s Feast, proud of their raping of Kenya and the poor, and another woman who is much like Warringa and fights for rights and equality after being used by men.
    They watch and listen to the Devil’s Feast and hear pride filled stories from the robbers and thieves about how they are using and destroying Kenya. They disregard the native intelligence and culture, seeing it as “primitive” and worthless, justifying their own desire to make money and rule the world. Thiong’ o obivously had a great disdain of the willingness of capitalism and western ideology to sell and use with little regard to what the west can learn from these cultures. This also includes Christianity and western religions which tend to ignore the Earth and destroy the beauty of the world instead of caring for and respecting it. It seems many of the most corrupt characters are the ones that claim they are from “The Church” and therefore have a ready excuse to ruin other people’s lives. The Feast goes on until two of the characters get the students, workers and the police to come and take them into custody. The police are paid off and actually arrest all the students and workers and put them in jail while the rich foreigners and Kenyans who advocate destroying the Kenyan culture go free.
    The end of the story is not one that I want to give away because it is such a powerful book. I have yet to read anyone that has characters who are so dense and soliloquies that are so eloquent and angry at the same time. This book is a difficult read if one is not willing to take the time to pay attention to the language and logic of each. It reminds me of As I lay Dying by Faulkner in that there are quick changes between characters who are narrating and each character is so different . That being said, Thiong’o's style is entirely different than Faulkner’s so please don’t expect that kind of prose. It is much more dense and yet lush at the same time.
    This is definitely a book that I will reread a few times in my life because I can only imagine how much I have missed while still enjoying it thoroughly. Also, Ngugi wa Thiong’ o will be coming to Mills College to speak in March. I look forward to reading his other novels before I hear him in person

  • Daniel Polansky

    A polemic parable about the evils wreaked on Kenya by colonialism and capitalism, written in Thiong'o’s native tongue and smuggled out of prison on sheets of toilet paper. A fascinating back story but it is doggedly didactic, and even agreeing with all the major points I still can’t imagine many readers actually enjoying the work itself.

  • Ronald Morton

    The master of ceremonies leaped on to the platform and called for silence. He addressed the audience and told them that this was a competition for thieves and robbers, real ones - that is, those who had reached international standards. Stories of people breaking padlocks in village huts or snatching purses from poor market women were shameful in the eyes of real experts in theft and robbery, and more so when such stories were narrated in front of international thieves and robbers. The foreigners had not traveled all this way to meet people who stole just because they were hungry or needed clothes and jobs. Such petty thieves and robbers were criminals. ‘Here, in this cave, we are interested only in people who steal because their bellies are full,” the master of ceremonies said, patting his stomach.
    Devil on the Cross was written during Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's one year imprisonment in Kenya (due to his explicitly critical and political play: Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want)); the novel was written entirely on prison-issued toilet paper.

    Oddly enough, the book has a fairly Russian feel to it - it still feels distinctly African in idiom though - mostly due to the tone of criticism of the corruption and cronyism of the political and economic elite. Ironically, most of the Russian books it reminds me of are fairly distinctly anti-communist (mostly just as a response to Russian power structure) while this book (and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o) are fairly pro-Marxist (again, in response to the Kenyan-power-structure, and capitalistic greed suppressing the Kenyan working class). The book has a bit of a magical-realism feel to it in the opening couple chapters, but that ends up fading through the rest of the book, and it ends up being a pretty straightforward condemnation of capitalism and the political elite in power in Kenya at the time.

    It's good, but is bogged down by the length of time spent on the speeches and ceremonies in the Thieves and Robbers Den; very strong beginning and ending though.

  • Mounir Neddi

    من روائع الأدب الافريقي، تحفة سياسية و إنسانية لا مثيل لها
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    قرأتها مباشرة بعد رواية الاشياء تتداعى، فبدت كأنها تتمة أو جزء ثاني لها، الرواية بكل بساطة تبرز أوجه العنصرية التي يعيشها الأفارقة داخل بلدانهم، كيف عمل الغرب على تجهيلهم و توهيمهم بقدسية الجنس الأبيض
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    الرواية تفصح بشكل صريح عن أوجه الاستغلال التي تعاني منه دول العالم الثالث، حيث الغني يأكل لحم الفقير و يتبنن به
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    الرواية تذرف دموع إفريقيا المرة، هي تجسيد حي لما جرى ويجري هناك من جرائم ضد الإنسانية
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    هي أيضا تجسيد لمعاناة المثقف الإفريقي وسط أمواج الجهل واستحالة مهمته، تجسد كيف يتنافس الخونة من أكلي لحوم شعوبهم على المناصب إرضاءً لاسيادهم الأوروبيين، كيف عمل الغربيون على إختيار ممثليهم من الشعب بعناية، لتمكينهم م�� الاستحواذ على الخيرات دون مقاومة من الشعب، وكيف يلقون لهؤلاء الخونة بفتات خيراتهم ليطغو به على بني جلدتهم، ويستبيحون كل محرماتهم
    ----------------------------------------
    كيف يعمل الفقر على تشويه الحب و تدنيسه، وكيف يفرض الحب نفسه في جميع الظروف، الكاتب يود أن يقول أن الحب هو ملتقى الطيبين في كل العالم ومن كل الفئات والثقافات، ثم يجعلنا نلتمس معاناة الطيبين في قبضة الاشرار
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    هنا ستدرك كيف خرج الاستعمار من الباب أمام أعين الجميع ثم تسلل عائدا خفية من النافذة الخلفية التي فتحها له الخونة ستدرك أن شيطانا واحدا يعيش بهذا العالم، هو الغرب ونظامه الرأس مالي، ستغني ثقافتك حول القارة السمراء بشكل مبهر

  • Abtin

    Teenage marxists will really enjoy this book, but it ain't no Animal Farm. The simple story telling style of the "robbers and thieves" is not memorable or captivating.

    It does a good enough job of introducing the idea behind the relations of production. It demonstrates how wealth is created through the exploitation of labor, but I didn't really feel indignation at the way the imperialist theives made their fortune.

    If anything, it gave me some great business ideas: subdivide properties and build housing, or start a school touting ties to classical European education. Maybe I'm just getting old.

  • Anna Pardo

    Llegir en N'gūgī wa Thiong'o m'ha fet millor persona. Amb els dos assajos que havia llegit (Descolonitzar la ment i Desplaçar el centre), vaig patir una transformació, vaig créixer. El diable a la creu va molt més enllà, i es quedarà amb mí per sempre, amb aquelles poques lectures escollides que et defineixen com a persona.

    Mentre el llegia, pensava: sort que en N'gūgī era a la presó quan el va escriure, perquè d'estar lliure segur que l'haguessin matat! Quina força, quina denúncia, quina crítica!! A l'imperialisme, al neocolonialisme, al capitalisme, al masclisme, al poder, al govern... Un cant a la llibertat, als treballadors, a la terra.

    Gràcies, GRÀCIES RaigVerd i Josefina Caball per permetre'ns gaudir en català d'un llibre tan important. No deixo de pensar en com n'és, d'important, la lectura i anàlisi d'aquest llibre! La grandesa de tot el que s'explica en aquesta història, un assaig en forma de paràbola plena de cançons i faules. Quanta bellesa!

    Podria estar-me una llarga estona parlant d'aquest llibre, i prometo difondre la lectura d'El diable a la creu sempre que pugui. Així que si voleu entendre el meu entusiasme: correu a llegir-lo!

    PD. Menció especial a la coberta del llibre, em sembla espectacular

  • Tori

    So far so boring. I feel bad judging it, seeing as I've read very little, but I don't think the translation works quite right...like, it's missing its soul or something. Or maybe I just don't like the style. I don't get all the biblical or cultural or whatever-they-are asides...like where they just all of a sudden start telling a depressing story and repeating themselves or singing...Maybe I just don't get it, but it's not very engaging. And the names confuse me. Sooooo...finishing this book will be rather painful.

    The only thing that saved this book from the "sucky" shelf was the ending. My negative visceral reaction aligned me with the people Ngugi is portraying as The Devil in a way that made me stop and re-evaluate my impulse to deem it "sucky." It was interesting and thought-provoking in retrospect. But so very confrontational. When it comes to thought-provoking confrontational African writers, I prefer Coetzee. Coetzee is at least enjoyable to read.

  • Jackson Cyril

    This is my first Gikuyu novel. Once the reader realizes that this is not simply a brilliant piece of menippean satire, one can appreciate also the remarkable aesthetic and stylistic elements of the novel (incorporation of folk songs, an oratorio, a play, oral story telling etc), its ferocious phrases, each of them dripping red with the author's blood, as well as the not inconsiderable fact that the novel was written on toilet paper while Ngugi was imprisoned. I have said before that Ngugi is the greatest of living novelists. This novel only confirms that fact. Why he has not yet received a Nobel is beyond the pale of my understanding.

  • Rachel

    This novel (or thinly-veiled, utterly unoriginal philosophical treatise) was an acute displeasure to read. If I had wanted to enjoy a dissertation on evil capitalist pigs, I would have read The Communist Manifesto. To compare it to The Communist Manifesto is actually an insult to The Communist Manifesto. At least Marx and Engels had the sense to stick to the realm of non-fiction (though I guess that's debatable.)

    If you enjoyed this book, God bless you. You have a fortitude of spirit that I can only ever hope to attain.

  • Clara

    Esta ha sido mi primera lectura de un escritor africano contemporáneo. Me ha resultado muy interesante, clara en sus intenciones y deliciosa. La historia está contada como una larga fábula, y en la narración se intercalan contínuamente parábolas y dichos, cosa que le da una gran autenticidad. Quizás precisamente el hecho de que se acerque a las narraciones africanas la hace un poco moralista desde el punto de vista occidental, pero las ideas que muestra son tan absolutamente obvias y necesarias que yo se lo perdono.

  • Pesh

    Two stars, that is what the author gets from me for trying so hard to complicate a story.

    But Ngugi is such a brain; one of the literary legends out of East Africa. Sometimes i wish i didnt have to read his books for Lit class. Perhaps if i had read them out of school i would have been more appreciative of them. Reading them for class made me look at them in terms of what the questions would require.

    I am making a weak promise to myself to re-read them.

  • Samuel Fuentes González

    Este libro resulta ser el grito de autor, oponiéndose ante las injusticias traídas por el neo colonialismo a las tierras de Kenia (tierra que lo vio nacer), dando nacimiento a una historia interesante y entretenida, ¿pero lo logra con éxito?

    El libro posee una trama que en sí es simple pero bien ejecutada. Con una continuidad de la misma y junto a unos personajes que evolucionan de forma que resulta cómoda para el lector. En ningún momento sentí que dieran vueltas en un mismo punto de la trama, sino que todo fluía con naturalidad. Sin embargo, esto último no se ejecuta sin fallos. Thiong'o en su texto abusa muchas veces del uso de las fabulas y metáforas para dar mas precisión a sus ideas, lo cual, para mi gusto, termina sacrificando esa fluidez en los personajes que presenta. No me cabe en la cabeza que alguien pueda comunicarse con otra persona de esa manera constantemente. En algún momento alguien saltaría exclamando que hable con naturalidad, que se entendió el concepto.

    Una de las mayores críticas que se ha recibido a esta obra, es que muchos la han acusado de ser una propaganda al comunismo. En cierta medida lo es, pero es tolerable por dos motivos: Primero, en cuanto al contexto que nos referimos y quizás a lo que motivó al autor a empezar a esta obra (la cual escribió en un rollo de papel en una celda), este se vio impulsado a criticar los males dados en su país natal y apuntar con el dedo índice a lo que vendría siendo para este los motivos por el cual su país se ha visto abatido; y segundo, el libro no te restriega en cada página dicha propaganda, la cual es mencionada una única vez y luego sigue el curso de la trama.

    Abusa un poco del InfoDumping que, después de leer la obra, te pones a pensar que pudo haberse dado de otra manera, y sufre de un pequeño Deus Ex Machina, el cual me terminó resultando como un chirrido de dientes, pero que a la final es perdonable. Perdonable por que al final no resulta como un resuelve barato por parte del autor para algo, ya que (como mencioné anteriormente) la obra se da con naturalidad. Así mismo, este libro posee un final muy satisfactorio por que vemos la evolución de nuestra protagonista a un punto creíble; y por que posee un plot twist tan bien ejecutado que resulta como una montaña rusa en las últimas páginas de la obra de Thiong'o.



    No creo que sea perfecto, pero tampoco es una obra que te haga sentir que has desperdiciado horas valiosas de tu tiempo. Puedes sentirte confiado en darle una oportunidad para que haga parte de tu estantería. Por mi parte le doy un 3.7 y la pongo en mi estantería con una sonrisa.

  • Dina

    "Literature is the honey of a nation's souls, preserved for her children to taste forever, a little at a time! "
    Esa frase describe bien este libro que busca empoderar las tradiciones de una Kenia intoxicada por los extranjeros. Tenía una expectativa alta de este libro pero defintivamente sobre paso todo lo que pensaba. Una novela interesante, con un mensaje contudente y personajes muy bien desarrollados. Una joya, no dudaría en comprar más libros que digan "Ngugi Wa Thiong'o".

  • Laura Norton-Cruz

    I hesitate between 2 and 3 stars because I loved what I learned from the book and the awareness that it renewed in me about neocolonial capitalist exploitation, and I love the strongly feminist awareness and message. However, the style of writing and the way the story was constructed read more like a treatise on leftist politics than a piece of art, and so as a novel it does not wholly succeed.

    Now, it is true that I and many others would not have read a non-fiction treatise on how certain members of Kenyan society sell their country to foreign colonial and corporate interests and how they exploited the independence gained by the Mau Maus to cheat and enrich themselves on the blood and sweat of their own people, or how the exploitation of women is bound up in capitalist exploitation. Putting these concepts in novel form was a very clever way for Ngugi to share this awareness and to call for hope and struggle. However, I wish he could have done it more artfully, because I felt at times that I was reading for obligation, never fully immersed in the language or flow of the book. It felt hackish in style, like he was desperate to fit everything in there, no matter how contrived it seemed in the dialogue between two characters.

    Nevertheless, I'd recommend it for anyone wishing to learn about Kenya, or possibly Africa in general, after colonial rule, and how independence has often been co-opted or exploited. It is also one of the most empathetic and in-depth views of systems of economic and sexual exploitation and violence against women I have ever read, coupled with a (somewhat less developed and believable) story of female resistance and strength, and for this reason alone I would recommend it. Still, though, while it is a good story of women, and a true story, it is not told with enough complexity and art to really hit the gut.

  • Gustavo Krieger

    I have always wondered how a writer that wrote amazing books like A Grain of Wheat and Weep Not, Child, could have fallen so low with things like Matigari. I don´t know the answer to this, but here is where the decline started (and fastly). Although this book has some moments, it´s the start of the simplicity, Manichaeism, Religious parables, and praise for Communism. Nothing againt Communism, but anyone who has read Ngugi in this phase knows he knows almost nothing about it - he didn´t read Marx, for sure. He read some pamphlets, at most.

    As I said the book has some good moments, but as in the terrible Matigari, Ngugi really believes that you can find the solution for your problems using guns. In Matagari, children using guns can solve a country´s problems. Here, a woman using guns can solve her personal problems. Way to go, Ngugi!

    Funny thing is, although his books are full of hate against capitalism and USA, today he lives happily... guess where.

  • Anthea

    Communist Manifesto meets Post-Independence Kenya meets Animal Farm. Incredibly difficult to read.

  • Hager Ragab

    مسرحية للكاتب الكيني،تصور حال بلده وأثر الاستعمار عليها وعلي انسانها من خلال مجموعة شخوص تجمعهم احداث انسانية طافحة بالالم،كشف اسلوب المستعمر في القضاء علي روح الانسان الكيني.

  • Yumin

    I cannot think it a mere coincidence that I found this book when I was searching for the meaning to study English as an ESL learner, who has not lived abroad so far, and who will never have chance to stay abroad in the future. Thing'o had better command of English than that of Kikuyu, which was the language of his locals, but he dared to write in Kikuyu to complete this novel, thus said the preface of Penguin Classics version. Reading this novel in English, I wondered what it means to have our own local language, and at the same time cannot feel it our own. For Thing'o, writing this novel might have been the process to regain his own language as the source of his own culture.

    In this novel, Japan, which is my home country, is depicted as one of the 'devils' from the West. When this novel was written it was 1977 and Japanese was economically successful then, so the Kenyan author might have thought that we were equally devilish with the Western 'devils', who oppressed Kenyan people culturally and economically even after their political victory to overthrow colonial ruling. It is true that Japanese have yielded so much to the West and lost a lot culturally after the devastating defeat in the World War II, to swap our souls with money. So I can see why the author added Japanese in the group of 'devils' very well. However, as Japanese, I declare that Japanese still have the same problem as common Kenyan people who appear in this novel. After the defeat in the last war, we were surely successful in economy, but now we are suffering from a lot of ironical situations such as rupture between social classes or loss of sound and proper patriotism. In that sense, the social problems and controversies depicted in this Kenyan novel is not at all what happened in a faraway place for us. This novel writes about social/mental conflicts and ambivalence that is universal in almost every non-Western country.

    Therefore, although the brave heroin and people around her encouraged me a lot, the conclusive part shows how difficult it is to overcome the excessive influence of the West, which holds the rein of both culture and economics worldwide. This novel does not give any concrete idea of how we can physically and mentally compromise this reality, but give strong insight and courage to think and act rather than to ignore this universal problem about Westernization.

  • BadReetReviews

    A book about the devil and his followers on Earth: the capitalists who oppress and exploit the workers.

    "The Beautitudes of the rich and the imperialist go like this:
    Blessed is he who bites and soothes, because he will never be found out.
    Blessed is the man who burns down another man's house and in the morning joins him in grief, for he shall be called merciful.
    Blessed is the man who robs another of five shillings and then gives him back half a shilling for salt, for he shall be called generous. As for the man who bites and doesn't know how to soothe,
    And the one who steals from the masses and does not attempt to deceive them with honeyed words,
    Woe unto him!
    For should the masses ever awaken,
    Such people will see through their arses,
    And may even pass on their disease to us,
    Who have been able to disguise our wicked deeds
    With the religious robes of hypocrisy."
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