2007-07-04 Challenging Narrative of Kenya's Independence

In A Grain of Wheat, Ngugi challenges the reader by using different voices within the narrative as different characters relate their views of the story, though the controlling narrative is in the form of the omniscient third person. What is really striking here is the dislocated chronology of the novel. Though at its centre it has Kenyan Uhuru, or Independence Day, the narrative repeatedly switches to different moments in the past. The narrative, though, gives no direct indication that the time focus is changing, as it does not only between chapters but also between paragraphs, which can sometimes leave the reader momentarily disorientated. This demands an alert reading, which pays rewards as at times the same event is returned to from a different angle at a different place in the novel, or the reader's response to event is coloured by their prior knowledge of what the consequences will be. Most crucially, it means that the day of Uhuru itself is inextricably linked with Kenya's painful and violent past, where courage and betrayal have been evident in equal measure. This explains why the longed-for independence is accompanied by "a disturbing sense of inevitable gloom".
The novel is an important retelling of history from an African perspective, directly challenging British colonialism in Kenya by charting the resistance to it which led up to independence, (or Uhuru, the Swahili word for freedom). His novel questions the imperial view of Kenya's history by presenting the Kenyan perspective, where the Mau Mau movement is sympathetically portrayed as a band of courageous freedom fighters, rather than as insurgents or terrorists. The novel describes the decline in imperial idealism as well as the brutality of the British military regime in Kenya in the face of resistance. However, he is equally uncompromising about the prospect for independent Kenya, describing 'a feeling of inevitable gloom' as Uhuru approaches because of the pain of Kenya's past and the corruption which is already evident in the new independent government.