Aesthetic solidarities: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Cold War

Abstract

Highlighting the absence of the Cold War from studies of postcolonial literature, this article focuses on the various levels at which the global conflict is reflected in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s work and its reception. Beyond direct and oblique references to the Cold War, Ngũgĩ’s choice of genre in Petals of Blood (historical novel in the socialist realist vein, at the expense of a discredited detective style of novel) speaks to the cultural solidarities Ngũgĩ forged across the Iron Curtain fault lines.