Download or read book Petals of Blood written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-02-22 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The definitive African book of the twentieth century” (Moses Isegawa, from the Introduction) by the Nobel Prize–nominated Kenyan writer The puzzling murder of three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery sets the scene for this fervent, hard-hitting novel about disillusionment in independent Kenya. A deceptively simple tale, Petals of Blood is on the surface a suspenseful investigation of a spectacular triple murder in upcountry Kenya. Yet as the intertwined stories of the four suspects unfold, a devastating picture emerges of a modern third-world nation whose frustrated people feel their leaders have failed them time after time. First published in 1977, this novel was so explosive that its author was imprisoned without charges by the Kenyan government. His incarceration was so shocking that newspapers around the world called attention to the case, and protests were raised by human-rights groups, scholars, and writers, including James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Donald Barthelme, Harold Pinter, and Margaret Drabble.
Download or read book The Oxford Companion to Twentieth century Literature in English written by Jenny Stringer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Survey of twentieth century English-language writers and writing from around the world, celebrating all major genres, with entries on literary movements, periodicals, more than 400 individual works, and articles on approximately 2,400 authors.
Download or read book The Perfect Nine written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling, genre-defying novel in verse from the author Delia Owens says “tackles the absurdities, injustices, and corruption of a continent” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novels and memoirs have received glowing praise from the likes of President Barack Obama, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and NPR; he has been a finalist for the Man International Booker Prize and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; and his books have sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. In his first attempt at the epic form, Ngũgĩ tells the story of the founding of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya, from a strongly feminist perspective. A verse narrative, blending folklore, mythology, adventure, and allegory, The Perfect Nine chronicles the efforts the Gĩkũyũ founders make to find partners for their ten beautiful daughters—called “The Perfect Nine” —and the challenges they set for the 99 suitors who seek their hands in marriage. The epic has all the elements of adventure, with suspense, danger, humor, and sacrifice. Ngũgĩ’s epic is a quest for the beautiful as an ideal of living, as the motive force behind migrations of African peoples. He notes, “The epic came to me one night as a revelation of ideals of quest, courage, perseverance, unity, family; and the sense of the divine, in human struggles with nature and nurture.”
Download or read book Petals on the Wind written by V.C. Andrews and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the heels of the successful Lifetime TV version of Flowers in the Attic comes the TV movie tie-in edition of Petals On the Wind, the second book in the captivating Dollanganger saga. Forbidden love comes into full bloom. For three years they were kept hidden in the eaves of Foxworth Hall, their existence all but denied by a mother who schemed to inherit a fortune. For three years their fate was in the hands of their righteous, merciless grandmother. They had to stay strong...but in their hopeless world, Cathy and her brother Christopher discovered blossoming desires that tumbled into a powerful obsession. Now, with their frail sister Carrie, they have broken free and scraped enough together for three bus tickets and a chance at a new life. The horrors of the attic are behind them...but they will carry its legacy of dark secrets forever.
Download or read book The Trial of Dedan Kimathi written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kenyan-born novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o and his collaborator, Micere Githae Mugo, have built a powerful and challenging play out of the circumstances surrounding the 1956 trial of Dedan Kimathi, the celebrated Kenyan hero who led the Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonial regime in Kenya and was eventually hanged. A highly controversial character, Kimathi’s life has been subject to intense propaganda by both the British government, who saw him as a vicious terrorist, and Kenyan nationalists, who viewed him as a man of great courage and commitment. Writing in the 1970s, the playwrights’ response to colonialist writings about the Mau Mau movement in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi is to sing the praises of the deeds of this hero of the resistance who refused to surrender to British imperialism. It is not a reproduction of the farcical “trial” at Nyeri. Rather, according to the preface, it is “an imaginative recreation and interpretation of the collective will of the Kenyan peasants and workers in their refusal to break under sixty years of colonial torture and ruthless oppression by the British ruling classes and their continued determination to resist exploitation,oppression and new forms of enslavement.”
Download or read book A Grain of Wheat written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by East African Publishers. This book was released on 1971 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Blood Kin written by Ceridwen Dovey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rarely does a debut novel attract the sweeping critical acclaim of Ceridwen Dovey's Blood Kin. Shortlisted for two prestigious awards, this tale centers around a military coup in an unnamed country, with characters who have no names or any identifying physical characteristics. Known simply as the ex-President's chef, barber, and portrait painter, these three men perform their mundane tasks and appear unaware of the atrocities of their employer's regime. But when the President is deposed, the trio are revealed as less than innocent. A deeply chilling yet sensual novel, Blood Kin illustrates Lord Acton's famous quip, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," and marks the beginning of an illustrious literary career.
Download or read book Zuzu s Petals written by Lauren Ward Larsen and published by . This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wrestling with the Devil written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors’ Choice "A welcome addition to the vast literature produced by jailed writers across the centuries . . . [a] thrilling testament to the human spirit." —Ariel Dorfman, The New York Times Book Review "Wrestling with the Devil is a powerful testament to the courage of Ngũgĩ and his fellow prisoners and validation of the hope that an independent Kenya would eventually emerge." —Minneapolis Star Tribune "The Ngũgĩ of Wrestling with the Devil called not just for adding a bit of color to the canon’s sagging shelf, but for abolition and upheaval." —Bookforum An unforgettable chronicle of the year the brilliant novelist and memoirist, long favored for the Nobel Prize, was thrown in a Kenyan jail without charge Wrestling with the Devil, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's powerful prison memoir, begins literally half an hour before his release on December 12, 1978. In one extended flashback he recalls the night, a year earlier, when armed police pulled him from his home and jailed him in Kenya's Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison, one of the largest in Africa. There, he lives in a prison block with eighteen other political prisoners, quarantined from the general prison population. In a conscious effort to fight back the humiliation and the intended degradation of the spirit, Ngũgĩ—the world-renowned author of Weep Not, Child; Petals of Blood; and Wizard of the Crow—decides to write a novel on toilet paper, the only paper to which he has access, a book that will become his classic, Devil on the Cross. Written in the early 1980s and never before published in America, Wrestling with the Devil is Ngũgĩ's account of the drama and the challenges of writing the novel under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He captures not only the excruciating pain that comes from being cut off from his wife and children, but also the spirit of defiance that defines hope. Ultimately, Wrestling with the Devil is a testimony to the power of imagination to help humans break free of confinement, which is truly the story of all art.
Download or read book The Crimson Petal and the White written by Michel Faber and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yearning to escape her life of prostitution in 1870s London, Sugar finds her fate entangled in the complicated family life of patron William, an egotistical perfume magnate.
Download or read book Birth of a Dream Weaver written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Oprah.com's "17 Must-Read Books for the New Year" and O Magazine's "10 Titles to Pick up Now." “Exquisite in its honesty and truth and resilience, and a necessary chronicle from one of the greatest writers of our time. ” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Guardian, Best Books of 2016. “Every page ripples with a contagious faith in education and in the power of literature to shape the imagination and scour the conscience.” —The Washington Post From one of the world’s greatest writers, the story of how the author found his voice as a novelist at Makerere University in Uganda Birth of a Dream Weaver charts the very beginnings of a writer’s creative output. In this wonderful memoir, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o recounts the four years he spent at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda—threshold years during which he found his voice as a journalist, short story writer, playwright, and novelist just as colonial empires were crumbling and new nations were being born—under the shadow of the rivalries, intrigues, and assassinations of the Cold War. Haunted by the memories of the carnage and mass incarceration carried out by the British colonial-settler state in his native Kenya but inspired by the titanic struggle against it, Ngũgĩ, then known as James Ngugi, begins to weave stories from the fibers of memory, history, and a shockingly vibrant and turbulent present. What unfolds in this moving and thought-provoking memoir is simultaneously the birth of one of the most important living writers—lauded for his “epic imagination” (Los Angeles Times)—the death of one of the most violent episodes in global history, and the emergence of new histories and nations with uncertain futures.
Download or read book Minutes of Glory written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling short story collection from the person Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls "one of the greatest writers of our time" Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, although renowned for his novels, memoirs, and plays, honed his craft as a short story writer. From "The Fig Tree, " written in 1960, his first year as an undergraduate at Makerere University College in Uganda, to the playful "The Ghost of Michael Jackson," written as a professor at the University of California, Irvine, these collected stories reveal a master of the short form. Covering the period of British colonial rule and resistance in Kenya to the bittersweet experience of independence—and including two stories that have never before been published in the United States— Ngũgĩ's collection features women fighting for their space in a patriarchal society, big men in their Bentleys who have inherited power from the British, and rebels who still embody the fighting spirit of the downtrodden. One of Ngũgĩ's most beloved stories, "Minutes of Glory," tells of Beatrice, a sad but ambitious waitress who fantasizes about being feted and lauded over by the middle-class clientele in the city's beer halls. Her dream leads her on a witty and heartbreaking adventure. Published for the first time in America, Minutes of Glory and Other Stories is a major literary event that celebrates the storytelling might of one of Africa's best-loved writers.
Download or read book Weep Not Child written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1987 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Two small boys stand on a rubbish heap and look into the future. One boy is excited, he is beginning school; the other, his brother, is an apprentice carpetner. Together, they will serve their country--the teacher and the craftsman. But this is Kenya and times are against them. In the forests, the Mau Mau are waging war against the white government, and two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, and the rest of their family, need to decide where their loyalties lie. For the practical man, the choice is simple, but for Njoroge, the scholar, the dream of progress through learning is a hard one to give up"--P. [4] of cover.
Download or read book Devil on the Cross written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1987 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Devil on the Cross tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a young woman who emigrated from her small rural town to the city of Nairobi only to be exploited by her boss and later a corrupt businessman.
Download or read book In the House of the Interpreter written by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2012 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of memoirs from the renowned Kenyan novelist, poet and playwright covers his high school years at the end of British colonial rule in Africa, during the Mau Mau Uprising. 15,000 first printing.
Download or read book African Literature as Political Philosophy written by Mary Stella Chika Okolo and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The politics of development in Africa have always been central concerns of the continent's literature. Yet ideas about the best way to achieve this development, and even what development itself should look like, have been hotly contested. African Literature as Political Philosophy looks in particular at Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, but situates these within the broader context of developments in African literature over the past half-century, discussing writers from Ayi Kwei Armah to Wole Soyinka. M.S.C. Okolo provides a thorough analysis of the authors' differing approaches and how these emerge from the literature. She shows the roots of Achebe's reformism and Ngugi's insistence on revolution and how these positions take shape in their work. Okolo argues that these authors have been profoundly affected by the political situation of Africa, but have also helped to create a new African political philosophy.
Download or read book Blood Keeper written by Tessa Gratton and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning blend of romance, horror and magic. All the beauty is yours now, Mab, all the beauty of the world. Take it. For Mab, blood magic is as natural as breathing. Wild and confident, she uses magic to understand her whole world. Will tries to dismiss all he sees and feels around Mab, but cannot prevent the strangeness and beauty of her craft from drawing him closer. When one of Mab's spells taps into a powerful curse, a terrifying foe is unleashed. Hiding in the shadows of the forest, it seeks to manipulate Will and gain Mab's power - threatening to destroy everything they love.
