Ngugi Nominated for Man Booker Prize; I Like this

In September, 2007, I complained about why the people who nominate writers for prizes were not nominating Ngugi for the Nobels, Bookers, Man Bookers and others. In a post entitled "Ngugi wa Thiongo and These Literary Awards", I talked about how I thought his works deserve recognition, that his commitment to African literature and to translation was worth something along the lines of these big prizes. And I was serious. So now I am just thrilled to see his name as one of the contenders for the 2009 Man Booker Prize, which Achebe won in 2007.

Just the other day I was rereading Petals of Blood, and told myself I need to re-read all of Ngugi. I haven't read Ngugi outside of Africa, so I feel I may have a different (I don't know) understanding of his works. Like how Marechera's works resonated to me differently reading them here than when I had read them in Zimbabwe, finding out there was more that I could relate with in works like The Black Insider, or if there was something that I couldn't relate to (because there has to be a lot that you must not relate to in Marechera's works) I gained more empathy,and a better understanding of the immigrant circumstances under which the works were produced.

I was noticing that what I had once taken to be a play with language and storylines was more serious than play; the works were appealing more as a window to Marechera's feelings about attending tutorials at Oxford or interacting with fellow Africans in pubs and tarvens. So, sometimes reading a work in a different setting does indeed bring a new perspective on the reader's understanding of the work. In fact, any additional reading of a work opens up the work some more.

So as I re-read Ngugi, I look forward to discovering a new perspective, perhaps a deeper one.

To read more about the 2009 Man Booker, go to the Prize Website.

Comments

Jonathan Masere said…
I hope Ngugi wins it. Let me say this though, his book The Wizard of the Crow - Murogi waGogo in Kikuyu - was disappointing. I was looking for a novel as biting and gripping as The Devil on the Cross or Petals of Blood but, unfortunately, Ngugi's last book was subpar by his standards.

Perhaps Ngugi is a victim of his success. He reminds me of Chinua Achebe's novels, all of them are judged against Things Fall Apart. Of course there will only be one Things Fall Apart.

As a side note; I think it would be wonderful if Nigeria had a theme park of Umuofia Village along the lines of Garison Keilor's Lake Woebegone or the town of Mayberry of The Andy Griffith Show.
Remember the argument by Memory Chirere that African novels tend to be thinner but richer than all others? Just like our nganos are short yet turgid with all the enriching literary features. Ngugi tried to write the great African novel in Wizard of the Crow, but when you read it you feel there is much that could have been left out. I started reading it when it first came (the most expensive novel I have ever bought), but stopped, after I decided I needed "more time to do this."

When he was working on it, someone in California had said to me, "Wait until you see the experiment Ngugi is doing with elements of African and Native American story-telling traditions". So I rushed to purchase it to see and, indeed, it has elements similar to Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, another novel I will enjoy somewhere on vacation.

So I think that maybe Wizard may just be a literary, but not a commercial success.
Jonathan Masere said…
The novel is 768 pages long and, believe it or not, I finished it. In the novel, Ngugi's story is a satirical rendition of the reign of Kenyan arch-kleptocrat, Daniel arap Toitich Moi. I have a lot of Kenyan friends, mostly Kikuyus and Luos, who have very little good to say about Moi.

On the subject of the hallowed literature prize, I hardly see Ngugi winning the Nobel Prize. His anti-imperial rhetoric does little to endear him with the voting committee - shades of Chinua Achebe’s publicly expressed displeasure at the works of Joseph Conrad. Both Ngugi and Achebe have a very understandable fixation with the violent interfacing, and the disastrous aftermath, of the European and African cultures. When the two cultures came together, it was not a warm, cuddly and mutually enjoyable amorous embrace. It was not pretty. The offspring of that contact, post-colonial African governments, has turned out to be even uglier and a constant reminder of the first act that brought the monster into being. Much to the discomfort of those who seek a détente, Ngugi and Chinua horn on the subject with laser-guided precision.

Giving either man the Nobel Prize will definitely open a Pandora’s box. Can you imagine the number of novels based on how the West’s accommodation of dictators brought ruination on the continent? There would be a deluge from Africa. It would not make pretty reading for the détentists.

Anyway, during contentious times, the decisive factor in winning the Nobel Prize is the socio-political overtone of the author’s work. It is political and only writers who toe a particular ideological line resonant with the prevailing popular opinion win the Nobel Prize, it seems. John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize on the back of his Civil Rights Era book, Travels with Charley, in which he attacks the folly of the racism he witnessed as he travelled across the southern end of the Bible Belt.
Masibanda said…
Thanks for alerting us about Ngugi's prize.I am a fan of Ngugi,he shaped my desire and appetite for literature, especially African literature.This man deserves this prize. I remember reading my first book by Ngugi, The River Between. Since then I looked for all his other works and read them. I bought Wizard of the Crow while on a two-week holiday in Kenya. My only regret was purchasing this book a few days before I was due to leave Kenya. Why do I say my only regret....? Because once I started reading the book, I could not put it down. I spent the remaining three days of my holiday in my hotel room reading the book instead of sight-seeing and buying souvenirs. The book is certainly a mass,and I had to leave a few things like my Rastafarian beads and hats just to accommodate this book. I have re-read it again a few times more. I think before we judge Ngugi negatively by this book, we need to understand that this book was originally written in Kikuyu and there is always this thing about loosing the original flavour if a book is translated from one language to another. I certainly did not find anything wrong with Wizard of the Crow. At first I thought he was writing about Zimbabwe, especially the queues of demons, and the book made me want to do a little bit of some research on Kenyan politics.I see Wizard as the longest African folktale I have ever heard or read.Behind it,there is humour and moral lessons.

Again,thanks for keeping us up-to-date with what is happening in the literature circle. Your blog is certainly one I can not afford to miss although I do feel that you need to do more to support upcoming authors and the efforts made by small presses like Lion Press Ltd in giving a fair chance to upcoming talents.
Thanks, Sarudzayi, for your thoughts on Wizard. As I stated in the post, I a reading some key Ngugi novels to celebrate his nomination, and that includes Wizard, and this time I will have the time to finish it, and perhaps, like you, re-read it.

Your work with Lion Press is highly commendable. Please don't hesitate to send a few review copies of the upcoming releases. I would love to review your translation of Joyce's book, The Divorce Token, VaMasere's book, Mlalazi's Many Rivers, etc...
Jonathan Masere said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jonathan Masere said…
Just like you Saru, I bought the novel thinking that it was a tome on the Zimbabwe body politic. Ngugi cleverly used a cover illustration in which the bigger crow has a military-style cap with the Zimbabwe bird on the rim band. Moreover, the truncated Zimbabwean flag on the cover leaves the impression that it is about Zimbabwe.

To add intrigue to it all, the title has allusions to Zimbabwe. You will recall that gunguwo was a derogatory epithet for Bishop Muzorewa - Sekuru Gunguwo – because of his religious vestments. Our gunguwo's was politically killed by the almost magical political and oratory skills of Mugabe. Some dare liken President Mugabe's skills to wizardry. To me, the superficial Zimbabwean metaphor simply stands out but what is inside is something else.

Be that as it may, no one is making an imputation of Ngugi’s book – I do not regret buying the book. It would be fairly easy to posit that Ngugi tried to pull a sly marketing gimmick by exploiting Mugabe’s unpopularity at the time of the publishing of the book. I have no idea what motivated Ngugi into using the Zimbabwean imagery. I will leave that to gurus of literature.

Anyway, a comparison of the author's works is inevitable. I would call it the unavoidable consequence of unintended relativity. For a layman like me not well-versed in the intricacies and academic intrigues of literature beyond what I did at O-Level, I can say not all of a writer's books are equally good. Some will be exceptionally good and some will be relatively poor while the rest will be somewhere in the middle. In science we call that trend a Gaussian distribution. It is quite common, like a dictate of nature.

This is the case with all the books of famous writers in my library. I have copies of Mark Twain's Joan of Arc, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In my opinion, the latter two are classics – classics are not just books I display, I read them, too. The former tastes sour by comparison. I say so because I have read all three. I could say the same about John Steinbeck novels, Tony Morrison novels, Achebe novels, Lewis Lapham books and so on and so forth.

Does the reminder that the novel, as we read it in English, was originally written in Kikuyu not come across as a circuitous admission that it was relatively substandard? As Ngugi himself states in Decolonizing the Mind, his most celebrated novels published after Petals of Blood were originally written in Gikuyu. As far as my rudimentary literature tastes are concerned, the quality of these books was not diminished by translation into English. Why would Wizard of the Crow be an exception unless it was comparatively poor right from the very beginning?

The judgement of the quality of a book is a matter of personal taste akin to snake venom; some call it poison that has to be avoided at any cost while others use it as medicine.
The Bookaholic said…
This is really good to know; I pray he wins. I read 'Petals of Blood' and that book made a great impression of me till I read 'Wizard of the Crow'.

Ngugi is the master-storyteller. But arguments have been made that he will not win awards because of the marxist undertone that his novels always have.

Well, he is just a writer and man who has convictions that that cannot but be revealed through his writing...

All for now!

Popular posts from this blog

Abuja Writers' Forum Call for Submissions

Roland Mhasvi's Flowers

FREEDOM, a poem on South Africa by Afzal Moolla