Ngugi wa Thiong’o | Photo: Steve Zylius / UCILit newsAs the world waits in anticipation for Ngugi wa Thiong’o to win the Nobel Prize in literature, the Kenyan author has bagged the 15th Erich-Maria-Remarque Peace Prize for his most prominent work of nonfiction, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. The biennial Peace Prize has been conferred on distinguished authors and scientists all over the world since 1991 in honor of German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, famously known for his All Quiet on the Western Front. In his widely acclaimed anthology of essays Decolonising the Mind (1986), he advocates the use of African languages in its literature, renouncing English to employ Gikuyu for creative expression. He has taught as a professor at Yale University, New York University and the University of California, Irvine. As his contribution in literature reflects the vision of Erich-Maria-Remarque Peace Prize, a jury of the prize committee states,“With Ngugi wa Thiong’o we are honouring a writer who is concerned with the self-determination of African cultures and with a dissociation from colonial constraints.

Source: Dhaka Tribune June 11, 2019 11:03 UTC