He was one of the most important authors of the African continent and a critic. “Take away our language and we will forget who we are,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o warned. In his homeland of Kenya, colonialism continues through the dominance of the English language. “But the night of the sword and the bullet was followed by the morning of chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefield was replaced by the psychological violence of the classroom. (…) The bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of spiritual subjugation.” Instead, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o called for „Decolonising the Mind“, the title of his most influential collection of essays. From then on, he wrote in Kikuyu.

On May 28, 2025, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o died at the age of 87.

We would like to remember him and the groundbreaking impact of his literature. What shaped his work? How did his first novel, Weep Not, Child, become a turning point in Kenyan literature? What influence does his work have on the continent to this day? And why did Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o remain only the “Nobel Prize winner of hearts”?

Dr. Rémi Armand Tchokothe in dialogue with Cornelia Wegerhoff.