With Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Summary

The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ andMũmbi is the Gĩkũyũ origin story, which Kenyan writer,Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o decided to retell in the form of a novel-in-verse– the first time that he has written in this hybrid-genre. AlthoughNgũgĩ is known as an established playwright, novelist andnon-fiction writer with thirty-seven titles that include Weep Not Child (1964), The Black Hermit (1974) and Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language inAfrican Literature (1986), he is nevertheless, willingto try new forms to break his own boundaries. In doing so, Ngũgĩuses the re-telling of the story to create his own form in telling,that has been described as Homeric.

The ten clans of the Gĩkũyũ people are created from the ten daughtersof Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi, who become the Matriarchs of the House ofMũmbi. (The tenth daughter has a physical disability and cannottake part in the challenges with her sisters, yet she has asignificant role in the telling of this tale.) Their daughters,Wanjirũ, Wambũi, Wanjikũ, Wangũi, Waceera, Nyambura akaMwĩthaga, Wairimũ, Wangarĩ also known as Waithiegeni, Waithĩraalso known as Wangeci, and Wamũyũ, each have their specialcharacteristics, outlined as they are introduced. As a myth, it isclassic speculative fiction and therefore, in the narrative, likeother myths and fairytales, the literary style is magic realism.Ngũgĩ's originality is rendered through its complex weaving oflayers of forms, styles and stanzas that is a signature ofnovels-in-verse yet, in doing so, the various layers also reflectthe specifics of the story itself, such as using stanzas of tenlines (as there are ten daughters), or multiples of the same in acombination of tercets and quintets, which develop its own rhythmicnarrative, first in Gĩkũyũ. As he made the decision to thentranslate it into English, Ngũgĩ’ essentially had to write the booka second time since considering that the syllable counts alone wouldbe different in English, and to ensure that the English translationalso developed its own rhythm and, as Ngũgĩ’ describes it, its ownmusicality, only the structure was maintained. This is part of thecomplexity of writing verse-novels that parallels the complexity oflayers in the time, language and location of speculativefiction.