Weep Not, Child (1964)

The Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the 1950s is featured in this story of 2 brothers, Njoroge and Kamau. Their lives and that of their family and many others are thrown into chaos when their loyalties are strained. Do they support the Mau Mau or do they support the colonial government. As the violence escalates, dreams and ideals are shattered as are families. ( )

In his first novel, Ngũgĩ tells the story of a village boy, Njoroge, hungry for education, growing up at the time of the fight for independence from the British known by the Kenyans as "the Emergency" and by the British as the "Mau Mau rebellion." Through the different members of his family and their histories (in which some of them were forced to fight for the British during the second world war) and their relationships with a neighboring African who has ingratiated himself with the British rulers and the main British farmer in the area who owns land that used to belong to Njoroge's family, the conflicts of the time emerge, as well as Njoroge's own intellectual and psychological development. This brief novel, although a little schematic at times, and not as complex as Ngũgĩ's later work, nevertheless paints a moving and powerful portrait of a time, a place, and a young person who may in some respects resemble Ngũgĩ himself.

A novel of the early days of Kenya's independence and a look at the resistance to the British colonialists through the eyes of Africans. ( )