The Launching of Petals of Blood

There would have been nothing memorable about the launching of Petals of Blood in Nairobi July 1977 except for three things: the presence of my mother; that of the guest of honour; and what followed the launching. The location was the City Hall, Nairobi, and nothing dramatic happened on that day except that a few members of the village delegation I had dragged along drank quite well and they sang and ululated and laughed. It was not obvious at the time, but now, in retrospect, that event was explosively political or rather it launched the novel into the centre of post-colonial politics in Kenya.

Before Petals of Blood, I had published three novels: Weep Not, Child in 1964; The River Between, 1965; and A Grain of Wheat, 1967. But this was the first time that my mother, Wanjiku wa Thiong’o, had been to any of the launches and for me personally that alone would have made the event more memorable than any of the others. I cannot even clearly remember the circumstances surrounding the publication of Weep Not, Child. It was my first novel to be published although the second to be written. All I remember is a pre-publication interview by John de Villiers that was carried by the Sunday Nation. De Villiers and I were colleagues but he was much more senior. I had been writing a regular column, As I See It, for the Nation group of Newspapers for two years. I was in my third year at Makerere University College when I started writing for the papers. And now, after finishing my undergraduate work, I was employed by the same group as a reporter. I was awaiting the results of my exams from London, the university to which Makerere was then affiliated, a fact which de Villiers, a veteran journalist and a senior writer for the Nation, mentioned in the interview. Weep Not, Child was also my first book and so everything dictates that I should remember all the details surrounding its publication, but I do not. I do not even recall if there was a formal publication party. This is strange because Weep Not, Child is dear to my heart: it is close to the events of my growing up although it is not autobiographical in a strict sense.