Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is one of the most influential African writers today, not only for his creative work but also for his wide‐ranging contributions on Africa's cultural thought and political life. Indeed, the role of the writer in shaping the cultural and political life of his people has been an enduring theme in his works. As novelist, playwright, and thinker, Ngũgĩ has been concerned with the role of culture as a source of historical memory and as a weapon against all forms of oppressive regimes. But he has also showed how narrative, specifically imaginative literature, can be an agent of history and self‐definition, an instrument for taming and naming one's environment, and has explored literature's role in the restoration of African communities dislocated by colonialism and by repressive postcolonial states.