Ngugi booked with 14 others for top prize

Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong’o with his book Wizard of the Crow during an interview with Reuters at a bookshop in Nairobi January 2007. The book, which took Prof wa Thiong’o more than six years to write, was released 20 years after his novel Matigari. Photo/ REUTERS

What you need to know:

  • Kenyan the only African writer on the list of nominees for Man Booker award

Kenya’s foremost writer Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o is among 14 contenders for this year’s Man Booker International Prize.

The prize that comes with a fortune of Sh6,480,000 (£60,000) to the winner is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.

Prof wa Thiong’o is the only African writer in the list of nominees, who include Nobel winner V. S. Naipaul.

The nomination alone is enough proof that the professor’s works are rated among the world’s best.

Other nominees for the prize are Peter Carey (Australia), Evan S. Connell (USA), Mahasweta Devi (India), E. L. Doctorow (USA) , James Kelman (UK), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Arnošt Lustig (Czechoslovakia), Alice Munro (Canada), Joyce Carol Oates (USA), Antonio Tabucchi (Italy), Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia) and Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia).

This is the third edition of the prize, which was won in 2005 by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare and Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe in 2007.

“By honouring Achebe, they have redressed what is seen in Africa and beyond as the acute injustice that he has never received the Nobel prize, allegedly because he has spent his life struggling to break the grip of western stereotypes of Africa,” said the Guardian in 2007.

The winner is chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel; there are no submissions from publishers.

Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o, whose writing career started 45 years ago, decided to stop writing in English when he was detained without trial in 1977.

He henceforth decided that he would write in Gikuyu. He wrote his latest book Wizard of the Crow (Murogi wa Kagogo) in Gikuyu and later translated it into English.

The book takes a critical look at the often hypocritical relationship between Africa and donor countries. It appears to suggest that donor funds are actually the main contributors to corruption and dictatorship in Africa, thereby fuelling underdevelopment on the continent.

His other book, The River Between, is currently a literature set book studied by secondary school students in Kenya. Prof wa Thiong’o is also a renowned essayist, with Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature and Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom, receiving international acclaim.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born on January 5, 1938, in Limuru. He attended Makerere University in Uganda and Leeds University in the UK.

During his tenure as a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, he was at the centre of the politics of English departments in Africa, championing the change of name from English to simply Literature to reflect world literature with African and third world literatures included.

The performance of I Will Marry When I Want — a play co-authored with Ngugi Wa Mirii — at Kamirithu in Limuru landed Ngugi wa Thiong’o at the Kamiti Maximum Prison as a detainee.

After his release in 1982, he fled to exile, first in Britain and then the US and only returned to Kenya in 2004. On his return Prof wa Thiong’o and his wife Njeeri were attacked by gunmen at their hotel in Nairobi.

In 1992 he became a professor of comparative literature and performance studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the director of the International Centre for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine.

The winner of this year’s Man Booker International Prize will be announced in May 2009, and will be presented with the award at a ceremony in Dublin later in the year on June 25.