A Grain of Wheat (African Writers) Review

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(More customer reviews)I loved this book. The story itself is compelling, detailing both African and European characters' perspectives on Kenyans' struggle for independence from Britain. Just for the story alone, the book is an intriguing page-turner that completely satisfies. But beyond that, it has a powerful and inspirational moral message that I have taken with me and hope never to forget.
Each of the major characters commits an act of betrayal to attain a greater goal, whether it's the British officer who wants to create a happy, harmonious colony and finds himself torturing and murdering in pursuit of this vision, or whether it's the Kenyan rebel who betrays his comrade to save his own life, feeling that he must survive to perform important tasks for his people.
Each one chooses less-than-perfect means to an imagined end. But what we and they learn, is that the "end" never comes, and we are left living day-to-day in the rubble of our "means." The betrayals that crisscross the novel scar all the characters with heavy losses, representative of the losses and betrayals that scarred Kenya as it stood on the threshhold of independence, divided between those who had collaborated with British occupation and those who had rebelled. And yet the final note is one of hope, that somehow reconciliation and transcendence of past injuries can be attempted.
I took to heart two messages: that those of us who struggle for justice in today's world must never betray our own principles in pursuit of some supposed higher good--because we too will be left only with our betrayals and no higher good in sight. And, that even after betrayals and years of conflict, there is still a spark of hope for renewal.

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Ngugi takes the reader back to the days preceding Kenya's independence. Mugo, a farmer and hero in the eyes of the villagers, is asked to deliver a speech during the Uhuru celebrations, to be held in memory of his friend Kihika. He refuses to make a speech and turns out to be a traitor.

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