Ngugi wa Thiong'o baptized James Ngugi was born in Limuru, Kenya on the 5th of January in 1938. He is one of Africa’s most recognized literary scholars for several decades. His literary journey started in Nairobi, working as a journalist for Nairobi's Daily Nation. With a great desire of accumulating more knowledge in the literature field, he flew to the UK to pursue further studies in literature at the University of Leeds.

His return to Kenya was faced with hostility resulting from some of his works and literary campaigns which were raising political consciousness among the peasants of his hometown of Limuru, which the Kenyan Government saw as a threat. This escalated into his arrest in December 1977 and was detained for a year. A few years after his release in 1982, he returned to England at the invitation of his publisher, Heinemann Educational Books, to launch a novel he had written during the period of his detention.

Later on, he traveled to the United States of America where he earned the title, “Erich Maria Remarque” professor of comparative literature and a professor of performance studies at New York University.

Ngugi wa Thiongo’s works focused mainly on social, cultural, and political problems faced by the people of Kenya, both in the past and current times. His most popular novels, “Weep Not, Child” and “The River Between”, were set in the colonial era of his childhood. They focused on the traumatic effects of the Mau Mau uprising on Gikuyu family life and the impact of the independent schools' movement on rural Gikuyu society. Some of his other famous novels were A Grain of Wheat, In Petals of Blood, I Will Marry When I Want, Devil on the Cross, and Mother, Sing for Me.

His greatest inspiration to continue writing was his imprisonment because this fuelled his passion and clarity of the message he was trying to convey to the exploited masses. His great achievements have been recognized through numerous awards like the East Africa Novel Prize, and UNESCO first prize to mention but a few. He has been a stimulus for the rise of various African novelists in the past years and many more to come.