Devil on the Cross - (Penguin African Writers) by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (Paperback)

About the Book

"First published in Gikuyu by Heinemann Educational Books (East Africa) Ltd 1980. English-language edition translated by the author published in Great Britain by Heinemann Educational Publishers 1982. This edition with an introduction by Namwali Serpell published in Penguin Books 2017"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

The great Kenyan writer and Nobel Prize nominee's novel that he wrote in secret, on toilet paper, while in prison--featuring an introduction by Namwali Serpell, the author of the novel The Old Drift

One of the cornerstones of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's fame, Devil on the Cross is a powerful fictional critique of capitalism. It tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a young woman who moves from a rural Kenyan town to the capital, Nairobi, only to be exploited by her boss and later by a corrupt businessman. As she struggles to survive, Wariinga begins to realize that her problems are only symptoms of a larger societal malaise and that much of the misfortune stems from the Western, capitalist influences on her country. An impassioned cry for a Kenya free of dictatorship and for African writers to work in their own local dialects, Devil on the Cross has had a profound influence on Africa and on post-colonial African literature.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Review Quotes

"One of the greatest writers of our time." --Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Guardian

"His novels . . . have been deservedly canonized by the iconic [Penguin Classics] series." --The Wall Street Journal

"One of our century's great novels." --Tribune (UK)

"Ngugi is the most celebrated of African novelists. What he offers is nothing less than a new direction for African writing." --British Book News

"Striking." --The Guardian

"Bold and disquieting and, like most great novels, wonderfully immersive. So immersive, in fact, that I dreamed about it. Devil on the Cross argues quite convincingly--so convincingly that, for a moment, I became a character in the novel, or perhaps Ngugi became the author of my life--that all of us are living within a dream. . . . This is not a well-behaved novel, the kind you might read with your book club while discussing character motivation over tea and biscuits. This is a novel that wants you to act. . . . It's the perennial question: What is the point of literature? . . . I can't say that Ngugi's intention was to mount a defense of literature when he wrote this, but I can tell you what this novel did to me. He taught me that it's time for us to build new dreams." --Tolpe Folarin, Los Angeles Review of Books

About the Author

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 Devil on the Cross, his novels A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood, The River Between, and Weep Not, Child are available from Penguin Classics.

Namwali Serpell (introduction) has won the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. The author of the novels The Old Drift and The Furrows, she was born in Zambia and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is a professor of English at Harvard.