Something Torn and New: Book summary and reviews of Something Torn and New by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Something Torn and New Summary

Novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o has been a force in African literature for decades: Since the 1970s, when he gave up the English language to commit himself to writing in African languages, his foremost concern has been the critical importance of language to culture. In Something Torn and New, Ngugi explores Africa's historical, economic, and cultural fragmentation by slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Throughout this tragic history, a constant and irrepressible force was Europhonism: the replacement of native names, languages, and identities with European ones. The result was the dismemberment of African memory.

Seeking to remember language in order to revitalize it, Ngugi's quest is for wholeness. Wide-ranging, erudite, and hopeful, Something Torn and New is a cri de coeur to save Africa's cultural future.

Something Torn and New Reviews

"Starred Review. Ngugi's language is fresh; the questions he raises are profound, the argument he makes is clear: 'To starve or kill a language is to starve and kill a people's memory bank.'" - Publishers Weekly

"A slim volume with a very impassioned discussion of the impact of colonialism and hope for cultural recovery." - Booklist

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o Author Biography

Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born in the Kiambu district of Kenya in 1938, into a large peasant family; he is the fifth child of the third of his father's four wives and is of Kĩkũyũ descent.  He was baptized James Ngugi, and while at mission school became a devout Christian. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau rebellion (an insurgency by Kenyan freedom fighters against the British colonial administration, 1952 to 1960); he lost his stepbrother, and his mother was tortured. 

He burst onto the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, while he was still at university. The following year Kenya gained its independence from...

Name Pronunciation
Ngugi wa Thiong'o: GU-gi wa-ti-ONG-go

... Full Biography

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