Summary

In Part VII, Ngũgĩ gives examples of reality that seems stranger than fiction, beginning with the decision of Togo’s president in 1984 to erect a statue of the German Imperial Eagle honoring and, in fact, celebrating the country’s colonization by the German Reich. Another example includes Mobuto of Zaire ceding a piece of land as big as New Zealand to a West German rocket company. Ngũgĩ is disturbed by these examples, pointing out that these African leaders are actually “begging for a recolonisation of their own countries with themselves as the neo-colonial governors living in modern fortresses” (80).

As a novelist, then, Ngũgĩ wonders how one can shock readers by pointing out something so openly acknowledged and celebrated. His only recourse, he decides, is to allow “the chemistry of imagination” (80) to transform all his...