Scholar, Ngugi Wa Thiongo bagged seven awards at the Kenya Theatre Awards held at the Kenya National Theatre on Thursday, February 23.
Ngugi bagged the World Impact Award in honor of his contribution to the development of Literary and Performance Arts.
His famous play I Will Marry When I Want and his Gikuyu poem Ngahika Ndeenda produced by the Nairobi Performing Arts also emerged top in the event.
For I Will Marry When I Want, the organisers rewarded the producers with Best Production, Best Director, Best Musical Score, Best Performer in a Leading Role, and Best Stage Manager awards.
Ngahika Ndeenda also won the Best Kikwetu Production, in the vernacular section.
"As you have heard from the narration of his struggles, I am sure he will appreciate this World Impact Award.
"On his behalf, I would like to thank the Kenya Cultural Centre and all those who put up the performance of Ngahika Ndeenda to all of you. Thank you very much. May theatre live on and become stronger every year," his daughter Tee Ngugi, who represented him at the event, appreciated.
Sports Cabinet Secretary, Ababu Namwamba, was the chief guest at the event.
Ngugi Wa Thiongo is a Kenyan writer, considered one of East Africa`s leading novelists. His famous novel Weep Not Child, written in 1964, was mentioned as the first major novel in English by an East African.
Among Ngugi`s novels, The Weep Not Child was a story of the Kikuyu family hacked into the struggle to acquire Kenyan independence during the Mau Mau rebellion.
A Grain of Wheat” in 1967 focused on the moral, social, and racial matters of the struggle for Kenyan independence and its consequences.
Petals of Blood in 1977 focused on social and economic problems in East Africa after independence.
Ngugi is currently a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California in the US.
He won the 2001 International Nonino Prize in Italy and the 2016 Park Kyong-ni Prize. In 2021, he lost the Nobel Prize for Literature to Tanzanian author, Abdulrazak Gurnah.
