In the following essay on Ngugi's Petals of Blood, Ayo Mamudu examines the narrative structures of the work as used to weave the past, present and futures of the characters into a portrait that illustrates the general history of human behavior.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in the future,
And time future contained in time past.

— T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"

Considered with his earlier novels, Ngugi's Petals of Blood shows a relative complexity which is inseparable from the ambitiousness of its author's aim and scheme: to examine the tangle of human relationships (and identify an underlying principle), to make clear patterns comprehensively observed in the history of a people (and show the wholeness of that history), and, above all, to achieve these objectives in a way that captures the changeable, dramatic and often chaotic qualities of life or history as it unfolds...