Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Second liberation hero, literary giant with few peers

Author professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o during an interview. [File, Standard]

On May 28 2025, Kenyans received sad news of the passing of Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o, an academic giant, pioneer scholar of African literature, an academic elephant on the African novel, a mukuyu tree of African prose and style, an iroko tree of decolonisation literature and a lion of African orature, cultural revivalism and deconstruction of ‘whiteness’ and ‘bourgeois’ hegemony in Africa.

Ngugi pioneered in many areas and his story cannot be told in a single article such as this.