Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938-2025) was an award-winning novelist, playwright, and essayist from Kenya whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. In addition to
A Grain of Wheat, his novels
Devil on the Cross,
Petals of Blood,
The River Between, and
Weep Not, Child are available from Penguin Classics.
Abdulrazak Gurnah (introduction) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 and is the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel
Paradise, among other novels. He was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and teaches English literature at the University of Kent in England.