Dreams in a Time of War

By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and author ofWizard of the Crow,an evocative and affecting memoir of childhood. Ngugi wa Thiongrs"o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a father whose four wives bore him more than a score of children. The man who would become one of Africars"s leading writers was the fifth child of the third wife. Even as World War II affected the lives of Africans under British colonial rule in particularly unexpected ways, Ngugi spent his childhood as very much the apple of his motherrs"s eye before attending school to slake what was then considered a bizarre thirst for learning. InDreams in a Time of War, Ngugi deftly etches a bygone era, capturing the landscape, the people, and their culture; the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war; and the troubled relationship between an emerging Christianized middle class and the rural poor. And he shows how the Mau Mau armed struggle for Kenyars"s independence against the British informed not only his own life but also the lives of those closest to him. Dreams in a Time of Warspeaks to the human right to dream even in the worst of times. It abounds in delicate and powerful subtleties and complexities that are movingly told.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Wizard of the Crow, Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, and Decolonising the Mind.


From the Hardcover edition.