Ngøgð wa Thiong'o was born in Limuru, Kðambu, Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. As an adolescent, he lived through the Mau Mau War of Independence of the 1950’s, the central historical episode in the making of modern Kenya and a major theme in his early works. He attended Alliance High School, at that time one of the two top secondary schools for Africans in colonial Kenya. He then went on to Makerere University College, Kampala, Uganda, and Leeds University in Britain.
Ngøgð burst on to the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theater in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962. ‘Ngøgð speaks for the continent,’ was how The Makererean, the student newspaper headlined on its front page the review of the performance by one of the college faculty. The Makerere days [1959-1964] were some of Ngøgð most productive in literary terms, with eight short stories, two one-act plays, two novels manuscripts while running a regular Sunday column, As I See It, for The Sunday Nation one of the Nation Group of Newspapers in Kenya. Ngøgð’s novel, Weep Not Child, (written in 1962) was published by William heinemann to critical acclaim in 1964 when he was only 26. Although it was the first to be published, it was actually his second novel. The River Between published in 1965 was the first in the writing order for it was written 1961. These two were quickly followed by the publication of A Grain of Wheat(1967), a turning point in the formal and ideological direction of his works.
In 1967, he embarked on a parallel academic career as a Special Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Nairobi. He taught there until 1977 with breaks to serve as Fellow in Creative Writing at Makerere in 1969-70, and Visiting Associate Professor at Northwestern University, 1970-71, eventually becoming Associate Professor and Chair of the department. His first volume of literary essays appeared in 1969 under the title, Homecoming.
The year 1977 saw dramatic turns and twists in Ngøgð’s life and career. His first novel in ten years, Petals of Blood, published in July 1977, painted a harsh and unsparing picture of life in neo-colonial Kenya. It was received with even more emphatic critical acclaim in Kenya and Abroad. The Weekly Review, a newsmagazine in Kenya described it as ‘this literary bombshell.’ The influential Sunday Times of London described the novel as exploring all the shapes and forms and colors that power could take. In the same year, Ngøgð’s controversial play, Ngaahika Ndeenda, written with Ngøgð wa Mðrið in Gðkøyø, was performed at Kamðrðthø open air theater, Limuru, with the actors coming from the workers and peasants of the area. Sharply critical of the inequalities and injustices of Kenyan society, publicly identified with unequivocally championing the cause of ordinary Kenyans, and committed to communicating with them in the languages of their daily life, Ngøgð was arrested and imprisoned without charge in Kamðtð Maximum Security Prison on 31st December of the same year.
After Amnesty International named him a Prisoner of Conscience, an international campaign secured his release in December 1978. He was barred by the State from jobs at colleges and universities in the country. He however resumed his writing and his activities in the theater. The play Ngaahika Ndeenda; and the novel, Caitaani Møtharabainð, the fist ever major play and novel in Gðkøyø language, were published in 1980 to be followed by Detained: A Writers Prison Diary in 1981; and Writers in Politics, another collection of essays, as well as I Will Marry When I Want and Devil on the Cross, the last two being English translations of the Gðkøyø play and novel. Three children stories in Gðkøyø, the Njamba Nene series, were brought out the same year. Ngøgð continued to be an uncomfortable voice for the government and in February1982 it would not give a license for the public performance of his play, Maitø Njugðra [Mother Sing for Me]. On March 12, 1982, the police destroyed the community theater at Kamðrðthø where his plays had been performed.
While in Britain for the launching of the novel, Devil on the Cross, Ngøgð learnt of plans to arrest him and detain him without trial or worse eliminate him and he stayed on in exile, living first in Britain, London mostly, 1982-1988 and then moving to the USA in 1989. His next Gðkøyø language novel Matigari Ma Njirøøngi, appeared in 1986 and the government, thinking that the main character was a real living person, issued a warrant for his arrest, failing which they ‘arrested’ the actual novel and between 1986 and 1996, the book could not be sold in Kenyan bookshops.
Ngøgð has continued to write prolifically and to speak around the world. In 1984 he gave the Robb Lectures at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, which were later published as Decolorizing the Mind, and in which he set his program for the development of an African literary and critical discourses based on African languages. He delivered the First Arthur Ravenscroft lecture at the University of Leeds in December 1990 called Moving the Center which became the lead essay in the book of the same title; and also The Dunning Trust lecture at Kingston, Canada in March 1992, Art War with the State: The writer and Politics in Africa; the forty-second annual Charles Eaton Burch memorial lecture at Howard University, in April 22, 1993, under the title, Decolorizing the Imagination; and the tenth Krishna Memorial Lecture at Miranda House, the University of Delhi on February 19, 1996 under the title: Literature and Politics;Transcending Borders. Later the same year , he gave the 1996 Clarendon Lectures in English at Oxford University, UK, and which were later issued as a book by the Oxford University press under the title, Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams. He also gave the 1999 Ashby Lecture at Claire Hall, Cambridge, under the title, Europhonism: African Universities and Scholarship. In December, 2001, he gave a special lecture at the annual MLA conference under the title: Out of Africa: Language, Knowledge and Empowerment. Ngugi is a Fellow of MLA.
Altogether Ngøgð has given talks in many colleges, Universities and centers of learning all over the world, taking him to different countries including, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Holland, Japan, Australia, Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa. He has also held visiting appointments at Northwestern University; the University of Byreuth and Temple University. In the Fall of 1991 he was the first Five Colleges Distinguished Professor of Literature based at Amherst and Smith Colleges; and January 1989-May 1992, he held a regular visiting appointment as a Visiting Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale. And since September 1992, he has been Professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University. In October 1996 he was honored by New York University as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of languages to acknowledge ‘extraordinary scholarly achievements and strong leadership in the University community and the profession.’
Ngøgð’s books have been translated in to more than thirty languages and they continue to be the subject of books, critical monographs, and dissertations. More than ten books have been issued on his work including those by Charles Cantalupo,(The World of Ngøgð Wa Thiong’o; and Ngøgð:Texts and Contexts,); Carol Sicherman, Ngøgð: The Making of a Rebel and Ngøgð: A bibliography;Oliver Lovesey: Ngøgð Wa Thiong’o; Patrick Williams, Ngøgð Wa Thiong’o; Simon Gðkandi, Ngøgð Wa Thiong’o; Peter Nazareth, Critical Essays on Ngøgð Wa Thiong’o etc. He has also received several awards for his writing including the 2001 Nonino Prize for the Italian translation of his book Moving the Center.