Devil on the Cross

Ngũgĩ wrote this novel in secret on toilet paper while imprisoned without charge by the Kenyan government in 1977-78 — and wrote it in Gĩkũyũ rather than English as a deliberate act of linguistic decolonization, insisting that African literature belonged to African languages rather than to the colonizer's tongue. The novel is a satirical feast: a competition of thieves and robbers arguing over who can best exploit the Kenyan people, rendered in the tradition of oral storytelling and biblical allegory. Banned in Kenya. The most formally radical African political novel and the one most completely written as a weapon — every formal choice, including the language itself, is an act of resistance. The essential African voice on the Laugh & Resist shelf and the proof that satire as a political weapon belongs to no single tradition.