TOME RAIDER: Wizard of the Crow, By Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (Anchor)

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o knows change. He’s changed his Christian name to one that better reflects his pride in his heritage. He’s known freedom and he’s known imprisonment. He’s been forced to move 9,500 miles from his birthplace in Kamiriithu, Kenya, due to a hostile Kenyan government.

But even separated from the subject of “Wizard of the Crow” by the width of a planet, a span of 22 years, and a great deal of allegory, Thiong’o stays true to Africa and to the African language, Gikuyu, in which the novel was written. Thiong’o’s latest book, written in the African oral storytelling tradition, tackles modern Africa, deftly navigating the way in which its world has been turned upside-down in the 20th century.

The 2006 novel is set in the Republic of Aburiria, a fictional African country in the midst of a serious crisis. The Cold War has just ended and the Ruler, installed by the United States to crush the Communists, has found himself sidelined by the Americans who no longer find him politically useful. Feeling abandoned and diminished, unsure why this has happened to him, he decides that to prove himself to more powerful nations and win back their respect, he needs to reassert his iron will.

But Aburiria’s return to iron-fisted dictatorship is merely the very, very beginning of the story. Myriad storylines continually diverge and intertwine in this sprawling novel, but the work centers primarily on the lives of four couples, each representing a different issue facing modern Africa.

Explored in the relationship between the Ruler and his wife Rachael is the issue confronting so many African countries today: the tyranny of an egotistical ruler. The Ruler’s tendency to sleep with women, sometimes no more than girls, in order to punish their politically insubordinate husbands and fathers epitomizes his deviously manipulative and base regime: for him, they’ve become mere objects to be used. When Rachael confronts him about sleeping with schoolgirls, the Ruler locks her away in a house. Futilely attempting to control every aspect of her environment and believing himself powerful enough to even stop time itself, the Ruler freezes every clock in the house at the minute she dared broach the subject to him.

But like all subjects under totalitarian regimes, she remains sovereign over her own spirit, and her refusal to repent is a silent but powerful protest. To the Ruler, “her tears had become the battleground of their wills.” With passages such as this, Thiong’o constructs a moving portrait of resistance to unfeeling despotism.

Juxtaposed next to the story of the Ruler is that of Tajirika, a dimwitted political schemer. His tale, too, deals with chauvinism. Tajirika is married to Vinjinia, the perfect wife, who accepts his many affairs. Along with the Ruler, he represents the corrupt, repressive status quo. Tajirika is frightened by the specter of a feminist movement and the increasingly outspoken reaction of women against the increasingly intolerant political regime. These women seem utterly foreign to Tajirika’s traditional vision of the quiet, demure housewife. In response to the political upheaval caused by the feminists and other progressives, Tajirika, feeling more and more politically impotent, turns to asserting his masculinity by beating his own wife. He thinks that even if he is politically incompetent, he still holds absolute power in domestic life. However, he is kidnapped and humiliated by a group of women calling themselves a “people’s court,” who threaten to castrate him if he ever touches his wife again. Thus, Thiong’o’s plot ridicules the men who dare to believe that, due to specious tradition, they are superior to the other sex.

In the third couple of the story, Mariko and Maritha, Thiong’o examines the ways in which Christianity impacts Africa. Mariko and Maritha are devout Christians whose problem is not one of violence. In fact, they have been happy partners for so many years that their fellow townsmen see them as twins. Society is shocked when they start coming before congregation every week to confess their secret lusts. Questions abound, both in the minds of the congregation and in the mind of the reader. Have Mariko and Maritha tended to their souls and neglected the needs of their bodies? Does a healthy sexual relationship clash with religious piety? It is only when they visit the traditional African magician, The Wizard of the Crow, that the couple finds a solution to their problem. Thiong’o suggests not only that Christianity does not preclude traditional African culture, but that it is at its best when it actively combines the two.

In the central plot of “Wizard of the Crow,” Thiong’o’s desire for an integrated culture and religion that is not simply Western or African, that is not just traditional but also innovative, reaches its apex. Here, Thiong’o presents Kamiti, a sensitive and perceptive young man, who tries several times to escape from the corrupt society that surrounds him to keep himself spiritually pure. He encounters Nyawira, a young woman who actively fights for social change amidst the corrupted society, as they flee from the police. Although at first they are wary of one another, they end up cooperating to scare off the policeman who follows them by posturing as the Wizard of the Crow.

From this original collaboration, a whole mythos is created. The officer later comes back for assistance, and the reputation of the Wizard of the Crow spreads. Together, Kamiti and Nyawira are established as the Wizard of the Crow, and they use the role to help solve the psychological and social ills of the Republic. They become the symbol of a new Africa, and all of Aburiria gathers hope from knowing of their existence.

Together they bring together and connect the stories of the Ruler, Tajirika, and Mariko. They diagnose and heal. They make things whole. And perhaps that is what Thiong’o is ultimately driving at: only through new collaborations can Africa’s topsy-turvy political and social landscape be righted. And that’s a welcome change.

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Schuetz can be reached at schuetz@fas.harvard.edu.