Author(s): Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Literature

Birth of a Dream Weaver charts the very beginnings of a writer's creative output. In this wonderful memoir, Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o recounts the four years he spent in Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda - threshold years where he found his voice as a playwright, journalist and novelist, just as Uganda, Kenya, Congo and other countries were in the final throes of their independence struggles. James Nguigii, as he was known then, is haunted by the emergency period of the previous decade in Kenya, when his friends and relatives were killed during the Mau Mau Rebellion. He is also haunted by the experience of his childhood in a polygamous family and the brave break his mother made from his father's home. Accompanied by these ghosts, Ngugi begins to weave stories from the fibres of memory, history and a shockingly vibrant and turbulent present. What unfolds in this moving and thought-provoking memoir is both the birth of one of the most important living writers and the death of one of the most violent episodes in global history.