This is one of the very early novels of the writer Ngũgĩ. He’s usually on the shortlist (unofficial) for the Nobel each year but keeps not winning. This seems likely because it’s possible he might reject the award (and maybe her should?) or use the platform to continue to spell out his anti-colonial politics (which he certainly should do). He’s completely fluent in English, like previous Nobel winner Wole Soyinka and like the unawarded but deserving Chinua Achebe. These three writers don’t all come from the same country or cultures (Soyinka is Yoruba and Achebe is Igbo), but they do share similar themes and styles, but unlike these other writer Ngũgĩ has chosen to much of his later writing in Gikuyu.
This early novel takes place at either the meeting place or the dividing line between a central question: how does a people respond to interpolative influence of a colonial country? The influence here is of course English colonialism, but especially in the form of Christianity. And the diving line is both the literal and the symbolic river that divides a valley. If you’ve ever lived anywhere with a long or wide river you already know how this shapes even city cultures on either side, let alone within a culture.
The story circulates around two former friends, Joshua and Waiyaki, the former who represents the move into white Christianity and the latter representing remaining grounded in traditional culture. A central event in the novel involves a young girl from one of the two villages who is proposed to go through circumcision (the novel is from 1965 and this divisive topic is not yet so publicly debated), which goes awry, killing her. This causes deep strife as the Christian faction was against the procedure and the traditional was for it. This leads to a cultural crisis, but also to a question the novel asks: change for the sake of change might have positive effects, but can it replace what is lost? Or put another way, what good is it to take something away, if nothing fills the void? It’s not an easy question and not one that is necessary answered here, or answerable even.
