Wizard of the Crow: A novel (Hardcover)

~ Ngugi wa'Thiong'o (Author)
Key Phrases: male daemons, white ache, national self renewal, Wizard of the Crow, Female Daemons, Global Bank (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The fictional Republic of Aburiria chronicled in this sprawling, dazzling satirical fable is an exaggeration of sordid African despotism. At the top, a grandiose Ruler with "the power to declare any month in the year the seventh month" and his sycophantic cabinet plan to climb to heaven with a modern-day Tower of Babel funded by the Global Bank; beneath them, a cabal of venal officials and opportunistic businessmen jockey for a piece of the pie; at the bottom are the unemployed masses who wait in endless lines behind every help-wanted sign. Kamiti, an archetypal New Man with two university degrees and no job prospects, sets up shop as a wizard; with the help of Nyawira, member of both an underground dissident movement and a feminist dance troupe, he dispenses therapeutic sorcery to a citizenry that finds witchcraft less absurd than everyday life. Kenyan novelist Thiong'o (Petals of Blood) mounts a nuanced but caustic political and social satire of the corruption of African society, with a touch of magical realism—or, perhaps, realistic magic, as the wizard's tricks hinge on holding a not-so-enchanted mirror to his clients' hidden self-delusions. The result is a sometimes lurid, sometimes lyrical reflection on Africa's dysfunctions—and possibilities. (Aug.)
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From The Washington Post

In the year in which the despotic leader of the fictional African nation of Aburiria announces a grand scheme to build the world's tallest building, Kamiti, a luckless job seeker, wakes up on a rubbish heap to find himself possessed of magical powers.

So begins Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's epic African political satire, his first novel in 20 years. Daunting in its ambition and scale, spanning more than 700 pages, it is, in the author's own words, the story of "Africa of the twentieth century in the context of two thousand years of world history."

The Aburiria of Ngugi's imagination is representative of many African dictatorships. Its leader -- known only as "the Ruler" -- and his band of sycophantic and feuding ministers govern (the term is used loosely) through a blend of showmanship and brutality. Corruption is rife, the economy nonexistent, and the giant building -- "Marching to Heaven" -- is intended to shore up their leader's popularity. In the era of globalization, all those who have fought for Africa's soul in the past -- church, despots and sorcerers -- are now joined by the Global Bank, on whom the government depends to finance its project. Since the end of the Cold War, the Ruler, like many Third World strongmen once useful to First World powers, now finds himself dispensable. His efforts to secure the funding for his world's tallest building project provide the arc of the novel's narrative.

The tale is in turns fantastical, surreal and scatological. One cabinet minister has undergone plastic surgery to enlarge his eyes "to the size of electric bulbs" in order to spot the Ruler's enemies. Not to be outdone, his main rival has his ears enlarged to the size of a rabbit's in order to be able to detect danger from any direction. On the day the building scheme is announced, the stage full of cabinet ministers and visiting dignitaries collapses and sinks into a pit of foul ooze. These flights of the imagination, the merging of real and unreal worlds, are in keeping with the qualities of African oral literature, as is the fast-paced narrative, marked by short chapters packed with continuous action.

Meanwhile, Kamiti, the poor job seeker, inadvertently becomes involved in a protest by the underground Movement for the Voice of the People during a visit by a delegation from the Global Bank. Kamiti, along with the mysterious female leader of the Movement, a woman named Nyawira, finds himself running for his life, chased by policemen. Hiding out in Nyawira's house, he comes up with the ingenious notion of posting a sign claiming the property is inhabited by a powerful sorcerer in order to frighten the pursuers away.

But what begins as a ruse soon takes on a life of its own. The Wizard, played by Kamiti but sometimes Nyawira, begins to receive a stream of visitors. First comes the policeman who pursued them and who becomes an occasional narrator in the novel, seeking help in winning a promotion. When his dream comes true, word spreads of the Wizard's power. After the wealthy come the poor and the oppressed by the thousands.

In a world that seems hopeless, magic provides the only possibility of hope. But what at first appears to be all smoke and mirrors, plus a basic understanding of human psychology, soon has both Kamiti and Nyawira wondering if Kamiti does indeed have magical powers. During a trip home to his family village, Kamiti's father reveals that Kamiti comes from a long line of sorcerers. When a corrupt businessman loses the power of speech, the Wizard diagnoses it as a case of "whiteache," the yearning to be European. Later, a similar ailment, though with a different cause, afflicts the Ruler. And the common people themselves feel the same weight of silence, which explains the appeal of the Movement of the Voice. "We want our voice back," cry protesters.

The themes of speech and silence have long preoccupied Ngugi, who achieved international fame with Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), in which he wrote, "The bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was a means of spiritual subjugation." In Kenya, English became the official language of education and communication. Ngugi pointed out that his own arrest and detention (without charge and in a maximum security prison) came only after he began to write in Kikuyu instead of English, thereby reaching a far greater number of ordinary Kenyans, a development that the authorities found threatening. Ever since, Ngugi has questioned the gulf between African intellectuals and their audience and resolved to write in his own tongue; Wizard of the Crow was first written in Kikuyu and translated by the author into English. If the language sometimes feels simple and if the narrative contains somewhat didactic set pieces on AIDS and domestic violence, it is worth remembering that Ngugi's works are often read aloud in public spaces.

Wizard of the Crow is first and foremost a great, spellbinding tale, probably the crowning glory of Ngugi's life's work. He has done for East Africa what Ahmadou Kourouma's Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote did for West Africa: He has turned the power of storytelling into a weapon against totalitarianism.

Reviewed by Aminatta Forna
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 784 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (August 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037542248X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375422485
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #376,839 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ngugi's greatest novel!, September 25, 2006

By	Steve Gronert Ellerhoff (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

I was first introduced to Ngugi's novels in my African literature class when I was an undergrad. My mentor, Peter Nazareth, who also teaches an incredible course on Elvis Presley, went to college with Ngugi in Uganda and postgraduate school in Leeds, England. The only writer from Africa I'd read up until that course was Achebe, but there are so many truly amazing novels by Africans out there that most Americans simply don't know about--a whole literature that goes far beyond Things Fall Apart: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Armah, Maru by Bessie Head, A Season of Migration to the North by Salih, The Famished Road by Okri, The Palm-Wine Drunkard by Tutuola, The Book of Secrets by Vassanji, Nehanda by Vera, A Walk in the Night by La Guma, The General Is Up by my mentor Peter Nazareth, and on and on. The best storyteller among them all, however, I must say, in my own opinion, is Ngugi wa Thiong'o. From his first works on up, they've just been better and better. A Grain of Wheat was the first I read, all about England giving up colonial power over Kenya, the Mau Mau movement, and Gikuyu culture. Another of his novels I love and have read several times is Devil on the Cross. He was detained by the Kenyan government in the late seventies after his novel Petals of Blood sparked the popular imagination and made him a threat to the regime. While in detention, he wrote Devil on the Cross, I'm told partly on toilet paper as it was all there was to write upon. Soaring with magic realism, it gives a mythic, moral critique of the Kenya he was experiencing. It's one of the great books I've read. And until this summer, it was my favorite of his works.

His latest book is Wizard of the Crow and I literally don't have the skills to convey how great it is. It's been awhile since he published a novel. His last novel before this was Matigari, which he wrote in 1983-84, first in Gikuyu and then translated it himself into English (as he'd done with Devil on the Cross). Over twenty years, then, since he finished his last novel. As it's published, it's 766 pages long, his longest work. And, I have to say, it is his best. It is the kind of story that cannot be written quickly, its scope encompassing much more than most novels do. This was a book that demanded incubation.

Wizard of the Crow isn't so much an African novel as it is a novel that explores Africa in a global context. It focuses on a fictitious country called Aburiria, which is controlled by a dictator called The Ruler. He's completely bonkers, and it isn't hard for me to see Idi Amin in this leader--the Ngatho - Acknowledgments at the end also point back to the Moi dictatorship of Kenya. But he, and his cabinet (with men who've undergone impossible plastic surgeries in Europe to have lightbulb-sized eyes and forearm-length ears--so as to be the eyes and ears of the country), aren't the only villains in this book. There's also the greedy businessmen and the Global Bank, who come to consider giving The Ruler money to build his very own tower of Babel so that he can speak to God every morning. On top of that, the country's money is cursed, giving off an overpowering stench to those people sensitive enough to such things as corruption, greed, and evil.

There are good guys, too, though. Of course there are. Ngugi isn't one of those writers who turns his back on hope. Kamiti is a young man, educated postgrad in India, who has been homeless and unemployed for several years after graduating--no one in Aburiria will hire him. He falls into his role as the Wizard of the Crow after pulling a prank to get a cop off his tail. He doesn't believe the mumbo jumbo he speaks, but everyone around hears of his powers and believes he's a healer and incredible sorcerer. Nyawira is a young woman he meets and the two of them develop an intense bond. She's tough, secretly being one of the top members of an underground movement that is against The Ruler and his barbaric administration. She also, interestingly, comes to wear the mantle of the Wizard of the Crow.

Ngugi's satirical edge is sharper than it's ever been, and he really cuts open the lies and shams of the world to get down to what's really moral and good in human beings. The ongoing current of humor is evenly tempered with moments of both sadness, in the harshness some people use against others, and wisdom that really gets to the heart of what's important in the world. I can't recommend this novel enough. If you're already into novels by African writers, you'll love this and might be amazed, as I have been, at how he ties the African experience together within the bigger picture. And if you haven't read any novels by Africans before, well, this is the one to read. It's got it all.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Children of the Despot, October 4, 2006

By	Joseph Tracy " dissident glass artist" (VT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Usually I read pretty fast, especially with a novel I enjoy, but sometimes a book compels you to put it down from time to time as you read to think about the story and the realities which the author is exploring. This was that kind of book, a tale to savour and think about. The style is african storytelling, full of fabulous events and characters and laugh out loud language and happenings including an explosive fart to end all farts, but it is also carefully plotted as a complicated political narrative. Ngugi Wa Thiongo is writing a satirical history of Kenya and similar African nations subjected for too long to corrupt "strong men" leaders, but on a larger scale he captures the Zeitgeist of our own time and the surrealistic language and machinations of those corrupted by power and violence. The Ruler of the imaginary country of Aburiria in the story is afflicted with a malaise which a bombastic Harvard doctor calls SIE, Self induced Expansion, he is physically expanding in sync with his seemingly bottomless megalomania. The hero is a character called the Wizard of the Crow who stumbles into awareness of his own powerful gifts when he needs to save his skin in a tight spot; he takes up the role of a modern day wizard and uses common sense spirituality and an ability to see hidden truths via mirrors to heal the sick. But while he seeks only to heal even the most vicious of men, his ministry has the side effect of disrupting the complacency of the greedy Ruler and his ministers, and bringing all the muddled forces of the state against him and his friends. The Wizard, his politically motivated lover and the women of Aburiria respond with imagiative pranks and the relentless demand to be heard. While some aspects of the story are handled with a comical magic realism, this fabulism is rooted in and constrained by a profound inner realism, and it allows for insight into the choices of characters and the resulting effects on society . The plot never relies on magic but shows the role of imagination in a community. His atunement to the distortions of political language and the excesses of global capitalism cut to the quick of current American and neo-colonial politics and are nothing less than brilliant. At times Thiongo may give the reader more of the mechanics of the plot than are needed but I think the writer's purpose was to make the choices of the characters more credible and to show the cumulative effect of those choices. All in all I found the Wizard of the Crow a really rich and engaging story from a writer with a unique perspective because of his confrontations with Kenyan despotism. Anyone who can be funny and hopeful after what he has been through is a remarkable person. ( I thought John Updike's review was off the mark, but don't care for Updike's recent work anyway)

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First you laugh, but then it all rings true, November 24, 2006

By	Patricia Kramer (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a fascinating book you can really sink your teeth into. The satire
is biting, the laughs come often but then the reality of our country's
present policies sets in. We would be lucky to have a Wizard of the Crow
right now in America. I highly recommend this book, it is a wonderful read.