Secure the Base

The first comprehensive collection of Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's nonfiction, spanning lectures and texts on colonialism, labor and political struggles, and the legacies of slavery. For more than sixty years, Ngũgĩwa Thiong'o has been fearlessly writing about the questions, challenges, histories, and futures of Africans, particularly those of his homeland, Kenya. In his work, which has included plays, novels, and essays, Ngũgĩ narrates the injustice of colonial violence and the dictatorial betrayal of decolonization, the fight for freedom and subsequent incarceration, and the aspiration toward economic equality in the face of gross inequality. With both hope and disappointment, he questions the role of language in both the organization of power structures and the pursuit of autonomy and self-expression.

Ngũgĩ's fiction has been met with wide acclaim, but his nonfiction work, while equally brilliant, is more difficult to find. Secure the Base changes this by bringing together for the first time essays spanning nearly three decades. Originating as disparate lectures and texts, this complete volume will remind readers anew of Ngũgĩ's power and importance. Written in a personal and accessible style, the book covers a range of issues, including the role of the intellectual, the place of Asia in Africa, labor and political struggles in an era of rampant capitalism, and the legacies of slavery and prospects for peace. At a time when Africa looms large in our discussions of globalization, Secure the Base is mandatory reading.

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