Ngugi wa Thiong'ois the author of, among other works,Petals of Blood,Weep Not Child,The River Between,A Grain of Wheat,The Devil on the Cross, andDecolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, now an essential text in post-colonial studies. Ngugi has argued that English is a "cultural bomb" that continues to erase pre-colonial cultures and history, even as it institutes new and more insiduous forms of colonialism. As Kenyan, he writes in his native Gikuyu, translating his works into English himself.
