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This is the original Gikuyu version of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's satirical novel Murogi wa Kagogo, published in English as Wizard of the Crow . The novel gives a surgical examination of the cult of dictatorship in Africa. The story is set in the imaginary Free Republic of Aburiria, and weaved around the Ruler and his coterie of court-poets, all of them the epitome of the dictum that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then there is Kamiti, the mystical figure who is the subject of conjecture, and Nyawira, the underground revolutionary in the vanguard of agitating for change in Aburiria. In the end, Ngugi manages to vibrate with the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the brutal frankness of Dostoyevsky; and the lyrical beauty of African folklore. Yet, the most intriguing question as you read the novel is: Who is the Wizard of the Crow?
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Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, essays and scholarship, criticism and children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. Ngugi went into exile following his release from a Kenyan prison in 1977; living in the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi renounced writing in English in July 1977 at the Nairobi launch of Petals of Blood, saying that he wished to express himself in a language that his mother and ordinary people could understand.
