Dreams in a Time of War

(Paperback)

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Description

A powerful memoir of an extraordinary Kenyan childhood by an widely celebrated international author. Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born the fifth child of his father's third wife, in a family that includes twenty-four children born to four different mothers. He spent his 1930s childhood as the apple of his mother's eye, before attending school to slake what is considered a bizarre thirst for learning. As he grows up, the wider political and social changes occurring in Kenya begin to impinge on the boy's life in both inspiring and frightening ways. Through the story of his grandparents and parents, and his brothers' involvement in the violent Mau Mau uprising, Ngugi deftly etches a tumultuous era, capturing the landscape, the people and their culture, and the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war.

Reviews

In his crowded career and his eventful life, Ngugi has enacted, for all to see, the paradigmatic trials and quandaries of a contemporary African writer caught in sometimes implacable political, social, racial, and linguistic currents -- John Updike * The New Yorker *
Delicate, fresh and scrupulously honest...calm and mature * Spectator *
Moving, honest and informative, this is a book about the influence of stories, storytelling and storytellers. It is a reminder that every generation, however beleaguered, can dream to change the world * Independent *
The work he offers us here is like nothing that's gone before: it is the chronicle of a child's single-minded pursuit of an education.... The picture of Kenya that he presents is admirably free of cant or sentimentality, and yet it is enough to make you weep * Washington Post *
Ngugi has returned to his roots to produce something delicate, fresh and scrupulously honest -- Michela Wrong * The Spectator *

Author Bio

Ngugi wa Thiong'o is one of the leading writers and scholars at work in the world today. His books include the novels Petals of Blood, for which he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977, A Grain of Wheat and Wizard of the Crow; the memoirs, Dreams in a Time of War and In the House of the Interpreter; and the essays, Decolonizing the Mind, Something Torn and New and Globalectics. Recipient of many honours, among them 10 honorary doctorates, he is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.