Ngugi's latest

Ngugi wa Thiongo’s latest novel, Murogi wa Kagogo, (Wizard of the Crow) has been launched in Kenya, but readers not fluent in Gikuyu will have to wait a while to get their hands on the Kenyan writer’s 1,000 page novel, published in four volumes.

Ngugi has been working on this book since 1997. The first volume was launched in August 2004 in Nairobi. The English translation was expected later in 2004, but has been postponed to 2006 by Ngugi’s US publishers Pantheon.

The Gikuyu version is being published in the four individual volumes which make up the entire book. The first volume runs to 300 pages. Pantheon is to publish the entire book, all four volumes, at once, hence the wait.

Murogi wa Kagogo is published in Kenya by East African Educational Publishers and was launched with Ngugi’s return to his homeland in August 204. He has been living in exile in the United States.

Ngugi’s has not published a novel since the 1986 release of Matigari.

The East African, a newspaper based in Nairobi, reports that Murogi wa Kagogo gives a surgical examination of the cult of dictatorship in Africa and the rest of the world. It is set in an imaginary country called Aburiria which is under the leadership of his excellency President the Second.

A review of Murogi will be published on this site shortly.