Ngugi wa Thiong'o is the author of, among other works, Petals of Blood, Weep Not Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, The Devil on the Cross, and Decolonising 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.
