Tributes to acclaimed African literature giant Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has died at 87

NAIROBI, Kenya — (AP) — In a bookstore in Kenya's capital, the proprietor arranged a shelf exclusively carrying books by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who died Wednesday in the United States.

Bennet Mbata, who has sold African literature at the Nuria Bookstore for more than 30 years in Nairobi, said he enjoyed reading Ngũgĩ's writing and is sad "he'll never write again."

Following Ngũgĩ’s death at 87 in Bedford, Georgia, Kenyans remember when his writing criticized an autocratic administration, which led to his arrest and imprisonment in the 1970s.

Tributes came from across Africa, including contemporaries like the continent's first Nobel literature laureate, Wole Soyinka , who described Ngũgĩ's influence on African literature as "unquestionably very massive."

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