MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Decoloniser of the mind
Jenny Farrell pays tribute to the work of the great African writer NGUGI WA THIONG’O and his incisive Marxist analysis of the continent, past and present
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
KENYAN-BORN writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who turned 80 this year, is nothing if not prolific. His first major novel Weep Not Child (1964) was followed by The River Between with its background of the Mau Mau war of independence, which he had witnessed, and A Grain of Wheat (1967).
He has gone on to write many plays, fiction, essays and memoirs, with his 1986 book Decolonising the Mind about the constructive role of language in Africa's national cultures, history and identity arguably his most significant.
For 10 years from 1977, Ngugi was a lecturer in the English literature department at the University of Nairobi where, to reflect a change of focus from English to world literature, he campaigned for the change of its name to simply the literature department.
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As Caspar David Friedrich’s 250th anniversary is celebrated in Berlin and New York, JENNY FARRELL urges viewers of the German Romantic painter to understand its true historical context, and beware its co-option by the far-right
As Caspar David Friedrich’s 250th anniversary is celebrated in Berlin and New York, JENNY FARRELL urges viewers of the German Romantic painter to understand its true historical context, and beware his co-option by the far right
