Renowned worldwide, as novelist and dramatist, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s contributions to the body of critical writing on African literature, politics and society have been highly significant. His work has profoundly influenced other writers, critics, scholars and students. These latest essays reflect Ngugi’s continuing interests and enthusiasms. His choice of writers is original. He makes us look again at their novels to address his lifelong concerns with the ways to independence, the meanings of colonialism and the takeover by neo-colonialism, and the functions of literature in political as well as literary terms.