Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a darling of contemporary English fiction, calls him “one of the greatest writers of our time.” Truly, the all-pervasive influence of Ngugi wa Thiong’o in telling Africa’s stories is revered worldwide. The world has mostly known him through his novels, plays and memoirs. The fact that the master storyteller is also adept in the short form was little known. With the publication of his latest collection of short stories, Minutes of Glory (The New Press, 2019), in March, readers can now experience a different wa Thiong’o, who can weave tales just as magical, but shorter.
Minutes of Glory was published for the first time in America this March. Containing two never-before-published stories, the collection features stories that were written early in the author’s career to some of the most recent ones. One of the earliest stories was written in 1960 when wa Thiong’o was a university freshman, “The Fig Tree”, published as “Mugumo” in this book.
Minutes of Glory (The New Press, 2019)
The stories in Minutes are wide-ranging. They take us back in time when Kenya was still grappling with the colonizing forces and had just become independent. From the dreams of an ordinary waitress in the city to the resistance of the pro-independence rebels, the book houses a myriad of bittersweet experiences within its pages. It also covers class struggles and speaks of the divide between the rich and the poor. The story after which the collection is named, “Minutes of Glory”, is about the aforementioned waitress who lives in a fantasy world of the rich and famous. When her dreams are shattered in the end, one cannot but feel for her naïve but lively spirit. We also see a glimpse of the empty world of the sudden-rich, just after they inherited their power from the British. The collection also features women who are fighting for their space in a patriarchal Africa.
The publication of Minutes of Glory was a major literary moment for the lovers of wa Thiong’o’s intricate storytelling, which makes more of his work available to the rest of the world.
