Ngugi: Please don't cry for me, cry for beloved country Kenya

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (right). He is an author and Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. [Courtesy]

Were it not for the grave claims about my alleged destitution in America, there is a comic feel to the fictive constructs that have emerged since my recent profile in The Guardian "went viral."

This calls to mind another spectre in 1986, when policemen were deployed to the streets to apprehend an insurgent whose name was Matigari, a character in my allegorical fiction by the same title. When they failed to find the suspect, they raided bookstores and carted copies away.