Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary

FIRST PUBLISHED 1981 — this copy. Copyright Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1981; ISBN 0 435 90240 7, cased 0 435 90650 X. The prison memoir of his year in Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison, detained without trial from December 1977 after the Kĩmĩĩrĩithũ community theatre production. THE COVER DESIGN IS BASED ON A POSTER BY THE NGŨGĨ DEFENCE COMMITTEE, LONDON — “FREE NGUGI NOW” repeated behind his portrait. The dedication names his fellow detainees at Kamĩtĩ one by one, and thanks the Union of Writers of African Peoples, Amnesty International and the international PEN Clubs. An extract from Brecht’s The Mother is included by permission of Eyre Methuen.