Research Catalog

Title

• The trial of Dedan Kimathi / Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Micere Githae Mugo.

Author

Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, 1938-

Publication

Long Grove, Ill. : Waveland Press, 2014, c1976.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Mugo, Micere Githae
• Mugo, Micere Githae,

Description

[ix], 85 p.; 20 cm.

Summary

"Kenyan-born novelist and playwright Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and his collaborator, Micere Githae Mũgo, have built a powerful and challenging play out of the circumstances surrounding the 1956 trial of Dedan Kimathi, the celebrated Kenyan hero who led the Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonial regime in Kenya and was eventually hanged. A highly controversial character, Kimathi's life has been subject to intense propaganda by both the British government, who saw him as a vicious terrorist, and Kenyan nationalists, who viewed him as a man of great courage and commitment. Writing in the 1970s, the playwrights' response to colonialist writings about the Mau Mau movement in 'The Trial of Dedan Kimathi' is to sing the praises of the deeds of this hero of the resistance who refused to surrender to British imperialism. It is not a reproduction of the farcical "trial" at Nyeri. Rather, according to the preface, it is "an imaginative recreation and interpretation of the collective will of the Kenyan peasants and workers in their refusal to break under sixty years of colonial torture and ruthless oppression by the British ruling classes and their continued determination to resist exploitation,oppression and new forms of enslavement."--taken from back cover.

Subject

• Kenya
• Kenya > Drama
• Kimathi, Dedan, 1920-1957
• Kimathi, Dedan, 1920-1957 > Drama
• Mau Mau
• Mau Mau > Drama

Genre/Form

• Drama
• Kenyan drama (English)

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 9781478611318
• 1478611316

OCLC

871567774

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library