Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow as Narrative of Kenyan Post-colonial Power Contestations

From Weep Not, Child (1964) to Wizard of the Crow (2007), Ngugi wa Thiong’o has remained deeply preoccupied with the fate of the Kenyan society in its transitions through different historical epochs. His interest in the evolution of modern Kenya has placed on him the burden of capturing landmark historical moments in his fictional narratives as well as non-literary writings on governance and other issues. Thus, it is no surprise that each of his seven published novels to date is suffused with themes anchored in his society’s discursive practices. The narratorial trajectory of his novels has led some critics to describe Ngugi’s novels as interventionist representations aimed at correcting perceived ambiguities in Kenyan history. While such readings are informative to the extent that they affirm Ngugi’s historical sensibility, they however fall short of critically interrogating the writer’s unwavering engagement with contemporaneous Kenyan issues in his novels. Through his fictional narratives, Ngugi participates in the various cultural, political and economic discourses on Kenya. Thus, to understand a novel like Wizard of the Crow, steeped in magic realism, requires an interpretation that separates the real from the fantasy, to reveal the salient contextual issues which ground the story. To achieve the aim of the study, the new historicist method is utilized, subjecting passages of significance to the critical practice of close reading and thick description ethnography to historicize the narrative and produce meaning. The analysis which also involves an examination of relevant non-literary co-texts demonstrates the novel’s participation in the contested politico-historical discourses of post-colonial Kenya.