The work of Engugi criticized both British colonialism in Kenya and later colonialism in Kenya.
His family members have announced that the renowned Kenya writer, Engugi Wa Thiane, died at the age of 87.
“We will announce the passing of our father, Engugi Wa Thiango, with a heavy heart,” his daughter Wanjiku Wa Ngugi wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
“He lived a full life, a good fight,” he said.
At the time of his death, it was reported that he was receiving treatment for renal dialysis, but his death was still unknown.
Born in Kenya in 1938, he recalled that he was one of Africa’s leading colonial writers. Structural events in the early life of Enkugi include the brutal Mou Mahu war in the 1950s, leading to British rule Kenya.
The work of Engugi was equally criticized by the British colonial era and the later colonial society that followed the independence of Kenya in 1963. Other things in their works include the ECTION between language, culture, history and identity.
In the 1970s, when he decided to change from writing in English to Kiku and Swahili languages, he made himself a mark – a controversial decision at the time.
“We all thought he was crazy … and daring at the same time,” Kenya writer David Milu told AFP news agency.
“We asked ourselves who would buy books.”
One of his most famous works, “Dikoloning the Mind”, was published in 1986 while living abroad. The AFP reports that the book argues that “it is impossible to free itself when using the language of oppressors.”
He was a prisoner of conscience, in addition to having a appreciated writer. In 1977, he was jailed for conducting a drama criticizing contemporary society in Kenya.
He once described the country’s new elite as “the death of hope, the death of dreams and the death of beauty.”
In 1982, Ngugi made a self-raised deportation in the UK after the ban on drama groups and performances in his homeland. He then moved to the US, where he worked as a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. He continued to write several works, including essays, autobiographies and novels about Kenya.
After the news of the death of NGG, praise for his life and work quickly appeared online.
“My condolences to the family and friends of Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong, a renowned literary giant and scholar, son and great patriots, their footprints cannot be erased,” said Kenya’s opposition leader Martha Karuva X.
“Thank you for your freedom writing,” he wrote in the Kenya Branch of Amnesty International. “After already gaining a place in the history of Kenya, they are transformed from death to immortality.”
Margaretta Wa Gacru, a sociologist and a former student of Enkuga, said the author was a national icon.
“I mean, he said,” He is like Tolstoy in Kenya, in the sense of the storyteller, the love of his language and the panoramic view of society, the description of the landscape of social relationships, the class and the class struggles, “he said.
