- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Classics; New edition edition (7 Feb 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0141187034
- ISBN-13: 978-0141187037
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14.9 x 1.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,793,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
THE RIVER BETWEEN explores life on the Makuyu and Kameno ridges of Kenya in the early days of white settlement. Faced with an alluring, new religion and 'magical' customs, the Gikuyu people are torn between those who fear the unknown and those who see beyond it. Some fellow Joshua and his fiery brand of Christianity while others proudly pursue tribal independence. In the midst of this disunity stands Waiyaki, a dedicated visionary born to a line of prophets. He struggles to educate the tribe- a task he sees as the only unifying link between the two factions - but his plans for the future raise issues which will determine both his own and the Gikuyu's survival.
About the Author
Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o is the author of THE RIVER BETWEEN, A GRAIN OF WHEAT and PETALS OF BLOOD, all available as Modern Classics. Ngugi was chair of the Department of Literature at the University of Nairobi from 1972 to 1977. He left Kenya in 1982 and taught at various universities in the United States before he became professor of comparative literature and performance studies at New York University in 1992.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This, the first novel that Ngugi wrote (if not published), is a deserved classic and one that encapsulates much of the tension in early post-colonial Africa.
The hero loves his education but finds that, through the British legacy, it has been bound up with Christianity and a betrayal of his tribal origins. Where does he want to stand: with the Christians or with his own roots? Desperately searching for a third way, the eponymous river between, he tries to negotiate village politics but is torn apart by increasing rivalry.
Relatively short, it carries a kind of fable quality, and is also touched with humour: the scene where the teenagers are stood in the cool river, prior to being circumcised and therefore made adults, hoping that the coldness will numb the pain is very funny.
Fundamentally, though, this is a tragedy, elegantly written and plotted. It is my favourite of Ngugi's novels and one that is still frequently on the O-level syllabus in countries in East Africa.
He published it first as James Ngugi and now you buy it written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Moreover, Ngugi himself, by deciding no longer to write his novels in English, has turned his back on the river between, or at least the potential highlighted in this novel. The issues he raised here, then, continue to be personally relevant.
If you read only three novels by African authors about Africa, this deserves to be one of them.
The hero loves his education but finds that, through the British legacy, it has been bound up with Christianity and a betrayal of his tribal origins. Where does he want to stand: with the Christians or with his own roots? Desperately searching for a third way, the eponymous river between, he tries to negotiate village politics but is torn apart by increasing rivalry.
Relatively short, it carries a kind of fable quality, and is also touched with humour: the scene where the teenagers are stood in the cool river, prior to being circumcised and therefore made adults, hoping that the coldness will numb the pain is very funny.
Fundamentally, though, this is a tragedy, elegantly written and plotted. It is my favourite of Ngugi's novels and one that is still frequently on the O-level syllabus in countries in East Africa.
He published it first as James Ngugi and now you buy it written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Moreover, Ngugi himself, by deciding no longer to write his novels in English, has turned his back on the river between, or at least the potential highlighted in this novel. The issues he raised here, then, continue to be personally relevant.
If you read only three novels by African authors about Africa, this deserves to be one of them.
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