An icon of not only Kenyan but African literature, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o casts a large shadow over the canon of literary works in Kenya, and his forthright opinions about language, publishing and writing make him a vital presence within the African literary world. His early years in Kenya were shaped by the specter of colonialism, with the violence of the Mau Mau War encroaching on his upbringing. He studied first in Uganda and then in the UK, where he wrote his first novel Weep, Not Child, a document of the effects of the Mau Mau War on ordinary Kenyan citizens, and a coruscating critique of colonial oppression. His most celebrated work remains A Grain of Wheat, which focuses on the Kenyan struggle for independence, and weaves a complex web of betrayal, deceit and bitter rivalry beneath the seemingly celebratory occasion of Kenya’s independence. In recent years Ngũgĩ has chosen to write in the Kenyan languages Gikuyu and Swahili and has published several works in these two languages over the course of last few decades.
2. Binyavanga Wainaina
A provocative figure who has developed a reputation satirizing western perceptions of Africa, Binyavanga Wainaina is a unique presence in Kenyan literature. He has become something of a figurehead for a younger generation of Kenyan and East African writers through his role in founding Kwani?, a literary network and magazine which brings together some of the best writers from across the continent. Wainaina’s debut One Day I Will Write About This Place was a memoir of his youth. It has been described as ‘a Kenyan Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ and it instantly thrust him into the literary limelight after it was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as a part of her book club.
3. Grace Ogot
A founding member of the Writer’s Association of Kenya, and the first African female writer to be published in English, Grace Ogot has been a pioneering figure throughout her career. Born in Kenya’s Central Nyanza district in 1930, Ogot published her first short stories in the early 1960s and her first novel, The Promised Land, in 1966. This depicted the migration of a young farmer and his wife from Kenya to Tanzania, and the tribal conflict in which they become embroiled. Ogot uses this narrative to question notions of female identity in East Africa, and to subvert the concept of the ideal African wife. She went on from this auspicious debut to release a string of celebrated works including Land Without Thunder (1968), The Other Woman (1976), and The Island of Tears (1980).