Devil on the Cross

by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Overview

This remarkable and symbolic novel centers around Wariinga's tragedy and uses it to tell a story of contemporary Kenya faced with the "satan of capitalism." Ngugi has directed his writing even more firmly towards the commitment that he shows in Writers in Politics and Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. The novel was written secretly in prison on the only available material -- lavatory paper. It was discovered when almost complete but unexpectedly returned to him on his release. Such was the demand for the original Gikuyu edition that it reprinted on publication.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780435908447
Publisher:	Heinemann
Publication date:	10/23/1987
Series:	African Writers Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	4.89(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and essayist from Kenya whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He lives in Irvine, California.

Namwali Serpell (introducer) has won the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. The author of the novel The Old Drift, she was born in Zambia and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is a professor of English at Harvard.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“One of our century’s great novels.” —Tribune
 
“Ngugi is the most celebrated of African novelists.  What he offers is nothing less than a new direction for African writing.” —British Book News  
 
“Striking.” —The Guardian

Editorial Reviews

One of the greatest writers of our time.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Guardian

“His novels . . . have been deservedly canonized by the iconic [Penguin Classics] series.” —The Wall Street Journal

“One of our century’s great novels.” —Tribune (UK)
 
“Ngugi is the most celebrated of African novelists. What he offers is nothing less than a new direction for African writing.” —British Book News  
 
“Striking.” —The Guardian

“Bold and disquieting and, like most great novels, wonderfully immersive. So immersive, in fact, that I dreamed about it. Devil on the Cross argues quite convincingly—so convincingly that, for a moment, I became a character in the novel, or perhaps Ngugi became the author of my life—that all of us are living within a dream. . . . This is not a well-behaved novel, the kind you might read with your book club while discussing character motivation over tea and biscuits. This is a novel that wants you to act. . . . It’s the perennial question: What is the point of literature? . . . I can’t say that Ngugi’s intention was to mount a defense of literature when he wrote this, but I can tell you what this novel did to me. He taught me that it’s time for us to build new dreams.” —Tolpe Folarin, Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Publisher