The literary giant had a history of prostate cancer and kidney disease and was given three months to survive in 1995.
In 2019, a triple heart bypass surgery was performed on him as his health began to fail.
Although he was bypassed several times as a firm favourite to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ngũgĩ who changed his name from James had in the space of 60 years cemented his reputation as a writer of immense appeal with books such as Petals of Blood, Weep Not, Child, The River Between which took the literary world by storm.
He was born James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ in 1938, to an agricultural family in the town of Limuru and attended the Alliance boarding school established by British missionaries.
He was directly affected by the Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonial authorities and their African collaborators after his village was raided and razed to the ground by colonial forces in pursuit of the rebels.
Members of his family joined thousands of other Kenyans who were herded into detention centres where some were tortured.
His own brother Gitogo died from a shot by British soldiers whose command apparently went unheeded. It was later established that Gitogo was deaf.
Four of Thiong’o’s nine children are accomplished authors in their own right.
WN/as/APA