Weep Not, Child
Cover of the first edition, published in 1965 | |
| Author | James Ngugi (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | 1964 |
| Publication place | Kenya |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 144 |
| ISBN | 0435908308 |
| Preceded by | The Black Hermit (play) |
| Followed by | The River Between |
Weep Not, Child is a 1964 novel by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. It was his first novel, published in 1964 under the name James Ngugi. It was in the African Writers Series of the Heinemann publishing company. Weep Not, Child was the first English-language novel by an East African to be published. Thiong'o's works deal with the relationship between Africans and white settlers in colonial Kenya, and are heavily critical of colonial rule. Specifically, Weep Not, Child deals with the Mau Mau Uprising, and "the bewildering dispossession of an entire people from their ancestral land." Ngũgĩ wrote the novel while he was a student at Makerere University.
The book is divided into two parts and eighteen chapters. Part one deals mostly with the education of Njoroge, while part two deals with the rising Mau Mau movement.