The River Between
  • Published: 21 October 2015
  • ISBN: 9780143107491
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $32.99

The River Between

Formats & editions
Paperback
21 Oct 2015
Paperback
27 Mar 2002
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The latest addition to the Penguin African Writers Series: the great Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o's powerful fictional critique of the influence of Western missionaries on postcolonial Kenya

A Penguin Classic

A 50th-anniversary edition of one of the most powerful novels by the great Kenyan author and Nobel Prize nominee

A legendary work of African literature, this moving and eye-opening novel lucidly captures the drama of a people and culture whose world has been overturned. The River Between explores life in the mountains of Kenya during the early days of white settlement. Faced with a choice between an alluring new religion and their own ancestral customs, the Gikuyu people are torn between those who fear the unknown and those who see beyond it.

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.
  • Published: 21 October 2015
  • ISBN: 9780143107491
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $32.99
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About the author

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is one of the leading writers and scholars at work in the world today. His books include the novels Petals of Blood, for which he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977, A Grain of Wheat and Wizard of the Crow; the memoirs, Dreams in a Time of War, In the House of the Interpreter and Birth of a Dream Weaver; and the essays, Decolonizing the Mind, Something Torn and New and Globalectics. Recipient of many honours, among them ten honorary doctorates, he is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.

portrait photo of Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Also by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The Perfect Nine
Petals of Blood
Secret Lives & Other Stories
Wrestling with the Devil
Devil on the Cross
Birth of a Dream Weaver
In the House of the Interpreter
See all

Praise for The River Between

"Beautifully compact . . . It takes its reader on a journey out of the colonial matrix and into the world of the real, showing us life reclaimed in all its complexity from the simplifying template of colonialism. . . . It has an undeniable power." --Uzodinma Iweala, from the Introduction

"Unparalleled as a chronicler of elemental change." --The Guardian

"It has the rare qualities of restraint, intelligence and sensitivity." --The Times Literary Supplement

"A sensitive novel about the Gikuyu in the melting pot that sometimes touches the grandeur of tap-root simplicity." --The Guardian