Wizard of the Crow (2006) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o as a postcommunist novel

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the 2006 novel Wizard of the Crow by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in a post-Cold War context as a postcommunist picaresque novel. Using the instruments of postcommunist and world-systems theory and comparing the novel to Eastern and Central European postcommunist writing, it shows how the concerns and aesthetics of both post-totalitarian discourses overlap. It is argued that postcolonial and postcommunist literature describes a crisis of identity symptomatic of all post-dependence cultures and represents discursive resistance to global capitalist modernity in which the meaning of the truth (historical, moral, cultural) has been destabilized. Emphasizing that any ideology can be a source of violence and colonization, Ngũgĩ’s novel, like the novel of his Slovakian counterpart Peter Pišťanek, calls for the breaking down of the traditional political binaries – Marxist/liberal, communist/fascist, socialist/capitalist, patriarchal/feminist – opening up space for new meanings.