http://www.amazon.com/In-House-Interpreter-A-Memoir/dp/product-description/0307907694/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
Book Description
World-renowned Kenyan novelist, poet, playwright, and literary critic Ngugi wa Thiong'o gives us the second volume of his memoirs in the wake of his critically acclaimed Dreams in a Time of War.
In the House of the Interpreter richly and poignantly evokes the author's life and times at boarding school—the first secondary educational institution in British-ruled Kenya—in the 1950s, against the backdrop of the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty. While Ng˜ug˜ý has been enjoying scouting trips, chess tournaments, and reading about the fictional RAF pilot adventurer Biggles at the prestigious Alliance High School near Nairobi, things have been changing rapidly at home. Poised as he is between two worlds, Ng˜ug˜ý returns home for his first visit since starting school to find his house razed and the entire village moved up the road, closer to a guard checkpoint. Later, his brother Good Wallace, a member of the insurgency, is captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. As for Ng˜ug˜ý himself, he falls victim to the forces of colonialism in the person of a police officer encountered on a bus journey, and he is thrown into jail for six days. In his second year at Alliance High School, the boarding school that was his haven in a heartless world is shattered by investigations, charges of disloyalty, and the politics of civil unrest.
In the House of the Interpreter hauntingly describes the formative experiences of a young man who would become a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass to us all. It is a winning celebration of the implacable determination of youth and the power of hope.
In the House of the Interpreter richly and poignantly evokes the author's life and times at boarding school—the first secondary educational institution in British-ruled Kenya—in the 1950s, against the backdrop of the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty. While Ng˜ug˜ý has been enjoying scouting trips, chess tournaments, and reading about the fictional RAF pilot adventurer Biggles at the prestigious Alliance High School near Nairobi, things have been changing rapidly at home. Poised as he is between two worlds, Ng˜ug˜ý returns home for his first visit since starting school to find his house razed and the entire village moved up the road, closer to a guard checkpoint. Later, his brother Good Wallace, a member of the insurgency, is captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. As for Ng˜ug˜ý himself, he falls victim to the forces of colonialism in the person of a police officer encountered on a bus journey, and he is thrown into jail for six days. In his second year at Alliance High School, the boarding school that was his haven in a heartless world is shattered by investigations, charges of disloyalty, and the politics of civil unrest.
In the House of the Interpreter hauntingly describes the formative experiences of a young man who would become a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass to us all. It is a winning celebration of the implacable determination of youth and the power of hope.
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Following Dreams in a Time of War (2010), acclaimed Kenyan writer Thiong'o, in this second volume of his memoirs, remembers his four years in boarding school in the late 1950s in Kenya's first high school for Africans, modeled on Tuskegee in the U.S. His brother is a guerrilla in the mountains with the anticolonial Mau-Mau (terrorist or freedom fighter?), and the teens' dual viewpoint will hold readers, both the wry commentary on the literature curriculum (he loves Shakespeare but doesn't get Wordsworth's daffodils) and especially his growing political awareness of the savagery of empire building ("King Solomon's Mines was full of adventure but clearly at the expense of Africa"). His inspiring role models include Garvey, Du Bois, and Nkrumah, and he joins the call for whites to "scram" from Africa. The A-student wins a scholarship to prestigious Makerere College, but, even though he is no activist, he narrowly escapes prison. The personal detail dramatizes the farce of the colonial land grab and of Christianity as liberation of the natives. --Hazel Rochman
Review
Praise for In the House of the Interpreter
"It's a work of understated and heartfelt prose that relates one man's intimate view of the epic cultural and political shifts that created modern Africa. . . . Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Kenya endures. And it comes alive in the pages of his brilliant and essential memoir."
—LA Times
"An inspiring story of a young man determined to excel and escape."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Alternately youthfully innocent and politically savvy, this is a first-rate telling of that African revolutionary elite who determined the future of their continent."
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for Dreams in a Time of War
"Absorbing . . . Infused with a child's curiosity and wonder, this book is deeply touching in its revelation of a whole community's stake in nurturing a writer."
—The Guardian
"Startling, vivid, [and] inspiring . . . Whether recalling joyful or challenging times, Ng˜ug˜ý displays a plainspoken yet beautiful prose style."
—The Christian Science Monitor
Praise for Wizard of the Crow
"In his crowded career and his eventful life, Ng˜ug˜ý has enacted, for all to see, the paradigmatic trials and quandaries of a contemporary African writer caught in sometimes implacable political, social, racial, and linguistic currents."
—John Updike, The New Yorker
"A great, spellbinding tale, probably the crowning glory of Ng˜ug˜ý's life's work . . . He has turned the power of storytelling into a weapon against totalitarianism."
—The Washington Post Book World
"One of Africa's greatest writers, and certainly the foremost voice of Kenyan literature . . . Possibly the best comparison to make is with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"It's a work of understated and heartfelt prose that relates one man's intimate view of the epic cultural and political shifts that created modern Africa. . . . Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Kenya endures. And it comes alive in the pages of his brilliant and essential memoir."
—LA Times
"An inspiring story of a young man determined to excel and escape."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Alternately youthfully innocent and politically savvy, this is a first-rate telling of that African revolutionary elite who determined the future of their continent."
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for Dreams in a Time of War
"Absorbing . . . Infused with a child's curiosity and wonder, this book is deeply touching in its revelation of a whole community's stake in nurturing a writer."
—The Guardian
"Startling, vivid, [and] inspiring . . . Whether recalling joyful or challenging times, Ng˜ug˜ý displays a plainspoken yet beautiful prose style."
—The Christian Science Monitor
Praise for Wizard of the Crow
"In his crowded career and his eventful life, Ng˜ug˜ý has enacted, for all to see, the paradigmatic trials and quandaries of a contemporary African writer caught in sometimes implacable political, social, racial, and linguistic currents."
—John Updike, The New Yorker
"A great, spellbinding tale, probably the crowning glory of Ng˜ug˜ý's life's work . . . He has turned the power of storytelling into a weapon against totalitarianism."
—The Washington Post Book World
"One of Africa's greatest writers, and certainly the foremost voice of Kenyan literature . . . Possibly the best comparison to make is with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children."
—San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has taught at Nairobi University, Northwestern University, Amherst College, Yale University, and New York University. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. His many books includeWizard of the Crow, Dreams in a Time of War, Devil on the Cross, Decolonising the Mind, and Petals of Blood, for which he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977.
Funmi Tofowomo
--The art of living and impermanence.
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