A Grain of Wheat

Each of the major characters commits an act of betrayal to attain a greater goal, whether its the British officer who wants to create a happy, harmonious colony and finds himself torturing and murdering in pursuit of this vision, or whether its the Kenyan rebel who betrays his comrade to save his own life, feeling that he must survive to perform important tasks for his people.

Each one chooses less-than-perfect means to an imagined end. But what we and they learn, is that the "end" never comes, and we are left living day-to-day in the rubble of our "means." The betrayals that crisscross the novel scar all the characters with heavy losses, representative of the losses and betrayals that scarred Kenya as it stood on the threshhold of independence, divided between those who had collaborated with British occupation and those who had rebelled. And yet the final note is one of hope, that somehow reconciliation and transcendence of past injuries can be attempted.

I took to heart two messages: that those of us who struggle for justice in todays world must never betray our own principles in pursuit of some supposed higher good--because we too will be left only with our betrayals and no higher good in sight. And, that even after betrayals and years of conflict, there is still a spark of hope for renewal.

"A Grain of Wheat" is not realism in the Western style. It does not set out to tell one story from one characters point of view. It does not rely on finely drawn character development, interior monologue, dilemmas established early and worked out late, and the sort of rational choices which characters exercising free will make in Western fiction. Rather, it is fiction in a Marxist-Homeric style with Biblical overtones, told from many points of view, and crossed, perhaps, with an African oral tradition. In "A Grain of Wheat" birth is destiny, struggle is inevitable, the Lord disposes, and until the very end of the novel destiny is therefore imposed on each of the imperfect village characters, rolling over them, grinding them into an "earth smoked grey like freshly dropped cow-dung", reminding them of dogs tearing the limbs off a rabbit and running "with blood-covered pieces" in different directions. (215, 229)

Kenya, Kenyas history since the late 19th century, and Kenyas emancipation from the Brits during the 1950s is the story of "A Grain of Wheat," and that story is told through the complex interactions of Kihika, a resistance leader; his beautiful, universally desired sister Mumbi; their friend Mugo, who wrestles with his conscience even as he is revered as a hero of the resistance; Kajanga, a quisling who becomes chief of their village and lusts after Mumbi; and Gikonyo, the husband of Mumbi, who, after seven years as a political prisoner, rejects his wife when her single flaw is exposed. Primal emotions fluctuate and move them. The changes of point of view are abrupt. The effect, kaleidoscopically, is to create a picture of an entire society in turmoil.

It may be difficult for Westerners to bond with the central characters. Their actions may sometimes seem strange. There is no program to identify them and no roadmap for the gradually developing plot. But it is a wonderful tapestry Ngugi creates, the politics are provocative, and the unvarnished images of Africa roll off Ngugis pen like the waves of a wine-dark sea. This book is well worth reading.