Minutes of Glory: And Other Stories

by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Overview

A dazzling short story collection from the person Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls "one of the greatest writers of our time"

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, although renowned for his novels, memoirs, and plays, honed his craft as a short story writer. From "The Fig Tree, " written in 1960, his first year as an undergraduate at Makerere UniversityCollege in Uganda, to the playful "The Ghost of Michael Jackson," written as a professor at the University of California, Irvine, these collected stories reveal a master of the short form.

Covering the period of British colonial rule and resistance in Kenya to the bittersweet experience of independence—and including two stories that have never before been published in the United States— Ngũgĩ's collection features women fighting for their space in a patriarchal society, big men in their Bentleys who have inherited power from the British, and rebels who still embody the fighting spirit of the downtrodden. One of Ngũgĩ's most beloved stories, "Minutes of Glory," tells of Beatrice, a sad but ambitious waitress who fantasizes about being feted and lauded over by the middle-class clientele in the city's beer halls. Her dream leads her on a witty and heartbreaking adventure.

Published for the first time in America, Minutes of Glory and Other Stories is a major literary event that celebrates the storytelling might of one of Africa's best-loved writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620974650
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	03/05/2019
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) was a leading Kenyan author and academic. He is the author of A Grain of Wheat; Weep Not, Child; and Petals of Blood, as well as Birth of a Dream Weaver, Wrestling with the Devil, The Perfect Nine, and Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas (all from The New Press). He was the recipient of twelve honorary doctorates, among other awards, and was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize.

Editorial Reviews

Seldom have the raw truths of Africa been exposed so vividly, yet humorously, as in this collection of short stories by the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o. With tales that tease, then bite, he tackles the absurdities, injustices and corruption of a continent and is never intimidated by the "immensity of the darkness" of which he writes. Nor is he cynical or judgmental. Only someone born from this soil could have grown the stories in Minutes of Glory…What shines through in Ngugi's stirring pages is a hopeful message. Even after generations of foreign then domestic repression, spiritual confusion, drought and hunger, the resilient spirit—a gathering of real souls—lives on in Africa, no matter whose ghost or god is worshiped.

The New York Times Book Review - Delia Owens

Praise for Minutes of Glory:
"With Minutes of Glory and Other Stories, Ngũgĩ assembles the quintessential collection of short stories spanning the length of his literary career."
—World Literature Today

"[Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o] has collected his best . . . these stories affirm the wide range of a global sensation."
—The Millions

"Thiong'o weaves together disparate stories of people attempting to deal with change in their lives, either chosen or forced upon them, showing his understanding of human nature, its frequent resistance to change, and its ability to surprise. This is a masterful collection."
—Publisher Weekly (starred review)

"Subversive and insightful, this masterful, long-overdue, yet timely collection introduces Ngugi's fiction to American readers."
—Booklist (starred review)

"A valuable literary view of African lives in a pivotal, turbulent era."
—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Birth of a Dream Weaver:
One of Oprah.com's "17 Must-Read Books for the New Year" and O Magazine's "10 Titles to Pick up Now."

"Exquisite in its honesty and truth and resilience, and a necessary chronicle from one of the greatest writers of our time."
—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Guardian, Best Books of 2016.

"It's hard to think of another living writer today — Orhan Pamuk, perhaps — who speaks so inspiringly and convincingly about the value of literature. No serious reader will want to miss this riveting story."
—The Washington Post

From the Publisher

2019-01-16

Early short stories by one of Africa's most esteemed fiction writers.

Long resident in the United States, where he is now Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, Kenya-born Ngugi (Wizard of the Crow, 2006, etc.) began his writing career while still a university student in British-ruled Uganda. The pensive story that opens this collection, "Mugumo," dates to 1960, describing a woman on the run, going—well, somewhere, anywhere "to get away from the hearth, the courtyard, the huts and the people, away from everything that reminded her of Muhoroini Ridge and its inhabitants." Her husband has abused her, his other wives are jealous of her, and she is childless, all good reason to flee. But then the rains come, the night fills with ghosts, and she has a life-changing dream that causes her to turn back. To that original story, Ngugi adds two later sections in which a time of rain and flood becomes a time of drought and famine, in which, many years later, the consequences of her choice become clear. Against a backdrop of late British colonialism and the earliest years of independence for Kenya, Ngugi writes of characters whose dreams are too often crushed: A young medical student kills himself after failing an exam, freeing himself from what would appear to have been a curse that renders his intelligence and good looks meaningless; a stern white woman, "having no opinions of her own about anything," concludes that the Africans around her are "inscrutable," rationalizing homicide; a churchgoer becomes a church elder and a respected leader only to be thwarted at the altar. Though these stories lack the psychological depth of Ngugi's later work, they point toward it as well as giving a valuable literary view of African lives in a pivotal, turbulent era.

Of great interest to Ngugi's many readers as well as students of contemporary African literature and the literature of colonialism and post-colonialism.

Kirkus Reviews