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IN THE HOUSE OF THE INTERPRETER
By: Ngugi Wa Thiong'O
Pantheon
November 2012
On Sale: November 6, 2012
272 pages
ISBN: 0307907694
EAN: 9780307907691
Kindle: B0082XLQW8
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
World-renowned Kenyan novelist, poet, playwright, and literary critic NgΛugΛΓ½ wa Thiongβo gives us the second volume of his memoirs in the wake of his critically acclaimed Dreams in a Time of War.
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In the House of the Interpreter richly and poignantly evokes the authorβs life and times at boarding schoolβthe first secondary educational institution in British-ruled Kenyaβin the 1950s, against the backdrop of the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty. While NgΛugΛΓ½ has been enjoying scouting trips, chess tournaments, and reading about the fictional RAF pilot adventurer Biggles at the prestigious Alliance High School near Nairobi, things have been changing rapidly at home. Poised as he is between two worlds, NgΛugΛΓ½ returns home for his first visit since starting school to find his house razed and the entire village moved up the road, closer to a guard checkpoint. Later, his brother Good Wallace, a member of the insurgency, is captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. As for NgΛugΛΓ½ himself, he falls victim to the forces of colonialism in the person of a police officer encountered on a bus journey, and he is thrown into jail for six days. In his second year at Alliance High School, the boarding school that was his haven in a heartless world is shattered by investigations, charges of disloyalty, and the politics of civil unrest.
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In the House of the Interpreter hauntingly describes the formative experiences of a young man who would become a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass to us all. It is a winning celebration of the implacable determination of youth and the power of hope.
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