Sometimes the work was desk-bound, boring and pointless, but there were years of gruelling manual labour too, weathering an otherwise youthful complexion. What all these jobs had in common was poor ...

Artistic tastemaker extraordinaire or charlatan merely posing as a genius writer? For a biographer-detective, there is no more thrilling case ...

One of the most influential African writers of his generation, Mr. Ngugi’s works grappled with the weight of colonial history and contemporary abuses.