Kenya's greatest living writer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, made one of the most radical decisions in African literary history in 1977. He abandoned English, the language in which he had written his celebrated early novels including Weep Not Child and A Grain of Wheat, and chose to write exclusively in Kikuyu and Kiswahili.
He said he could not reach the people he was writing about in a language most of them had never been taught. His play Ngaahika Ndeenda, I Will Marry When I Want, written in Kikuyu and performed by peasants and workers, was so politically charged that Moi's government detained him without trial in 1977.