Ngugi Wa Thiong'o’s new memoir illuminates his sympathy for the oppressed

Ngugi wa Thiong'o’s memoir, Dreams in a Time of War, illuminates the source of the sympathy for the weak and vulnerable that has come to characterise his literary work and political views.

The Dickensian penury described in the opening in which sixteen-year-old Ngugi has to run six miles to school after only having a bowl of porridge for breakfast and later have nothing to eat for lunch, sets the scene.

A childhood scarred by torturous colonial times, fear and frailties characterises Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s upbringing in central Kenya.

In the first installment of, Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir, the poverty, love of books, the art of storytelling, politics and violence that light up his early life mark the sparks that ignite his sympathy for the oppressed.

The events and individuals he presents in the memoir echo characters from his early books, notably, Weep Not, Child, The River Between, and A Grain of Wheat.

Born in 1938 in the shadow of the Second World War and growing up in 1950s colonial Kenya, the repression caused by the state of Emergency and being forced to live in what Ngugi calls ‘concentration villages’, provides extremely difficult times. Mistrust threatens the cohesion of Ngugi’s family as brothers align themselves on the opposing sides of the struggle.

The childhood portrayed in the memoir is not all gloom and doom. There are fond memories of those who made huge sacrifices (especially his mother) so that Ngugi would live to tell his story and happy ones too of fireside stories in his father’s house that brought out the storyteller in Ngugi.

In the video below, Ngugi, at an interview with Granta, discusses the memoir and its illuminations on the author.

So, how significant do you think a painful childhood is in shaping a writer’s literary work?

The scariest villains in literature ever

The literary world is awash with scary fictional characters, but there has to be one whom you consider to be the most terrifying ever.

We are not just talking of Count Dracula’s I-will-suck –your blood type of scary. We are talking of the character that makes you shiver with the incomprehensible nature of human evil.

For a while, mine has been Big Brother from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. What is there not to be scared about a character from whom you cannot hide? But then again, because nearly all of the state surveillance imagined in this classic novel has already come to pass, with time, Big Brother is slowly becoming part of our psyche. Talk of normalizing the abnormal.

And how about Victor Frankenstein whose attempt to ‘create life’ is disastrously unsettling? Is he scary?Yes, very!

But the scariest, most villainous character ever, has to be Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights. This sinister character’s desire for revenge, initially, makes him an almost romantic hero ready to go the length to win over Catherine, his love.

Heathcliff, however, becomes increasingly sadistic, especially in his abuse of Isabella. Any sympathy that the reader may have had for him as a child tormented by Hindley Earnshaw evaporates to the thin air when he returns to Wuthering Heights a wealthy man ever more hell-bent on a vengeful warpath.

Heathcliff’s indefensible, endless sadism and failure to reform, against all expectations, makes him both a memorable and probably the scariest character in literature ever.

The following is an extract from Telegraph’s list of 50 Greatest Villains in Literature:

1.     O’Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell

2.     Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

3.     Mr. Hyde from Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

4.     Long John Silver from Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

5.     Iago from Othello, by William Shakespeare

6.     Satan from Paradise Lost, by John Milton

7.     Voldermort from the Harry Potter series by J. K Rowling

8.     Captain Hook from Peter and Wendy, by JM Barrie

9.     Moriarty from The Final Problem, by Arthur Conan Doyle

10.  Mr Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

So, who do you think is the scariest, most villainous character in literature, ever?