The Black Hermit

NGUGI WA THIONG’O is best known internationally for his novels Weep Not Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross. His latest novel is Matigari.  The story of how the Gikuyu original was confiscated in prison is told in Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary. His stories Secret Lives span all the themes which have emerged in his writing from anti-colonial struggles to Mau Mau guerrilla to those of the peasants and workers in independent Kenya. With Micere Mugo, he has written the play The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. He has also published the plays This Time Tomorrow and The Black Hermit. His detention without trial in 1978 probably followed the Limuru production of his Ngugi wa Mirri’s Gikuyu play which is published in English as I Will Marry When I Want.

Should Remi, the first of his tribe to go to university, return to his people from the city? Should he return to Thoni, his brother’s widow, whom he has to marry under tribal custom? Or should he continue to be a ‘black hermit’ in the town, visiting the night-clubs with his friend Jane? Should he be supporting the Africanist Party when his people feel that colonial oppression has just been replaced by another form? These are the dramatic conflicts in this play which has been performed at the Uganda National Theatre. It is also available in a Swahili translation from (Heinemann) East Africa.