One of Oprah.com's "17 Must-Read Books for the New Year" and O
Magazine's "10 Titles to Pick up Now."
"Exquisite in its honesty and truth and resilience, and a necessary
chronicle from one of the greatest writers of our time."
--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Guardian, Best Books of 2016.
"Every page ripples with a contagious faith in education and in the
power of literature to shape the imagination and scour the
conscience."
--The Washington Post
From one of the world's greatest writers, the story of how the author
found his voice as a novelist at Makerere University in Uganda
Birth of a Dream Weaver charts the very beginnings of a writer's
creative output. In this wonderful memoir, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong'o recounts the four years he spent at Makerere University in
Kampala, Uganda--threshold years during which he found his voice as a
journalist, short story writer, playwright, and novelist just as
colonial empires were crumbling and new nations were being born--under
the shadow of the rivalries, intrigues, and assassinations of the Cold
War.
Haunted by the memories of the carnage and mass incarceration carried
out by the British colonial-settler state in his native Kenya but
inspired by the titanic struggle against it, Ngũgĩ, then known as James
Ngugi, begins to weave stories from the fibers of memory, history, and a
shockingly vibrant and turbulent present.
What unfolds in this moving and thought-provoking memoir is
simultaneously the birth of one of the most important living
writers--lauded for his "epic imagination" (Los Angeles Times)--the
death of one of the most violent episodes in global history, and the
emergence of new histories and nations with uncertain futures.
