stochita reviewed Wrestling with the Devil by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Review of 'Wrestling with the Devil' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Ngugi writes from his heart the entire time. He is not afraid of stripping himself off the shield of power that the others might want to see on him. Tears, insanity, resistance, honesty and a desire of change and improvement in the lives of the people at the bottom of the class system, make this novel a must-read for everyone, regardless of their age.
As we are living some turbulent times, in which the rich are getting richer, the poor even poorer, being more oppressed and subjugated by the economic conditions created by capitalism, this book could seem like that grain of hope that sometimes is needed for survival. It is a slap, a hard slap on the culture of #RiseAndGrind of today, calling for an awake call regarding the situation of the oppressed people.
Give up and follow the oppressor with the promise of living a good life, according …
Ngugi writes from his heart the entire time. He is not afraid of stripping himself off the shield of power that the others might want to see on him. Tears, insanity, resistance, honesty and a desire of change and improvement in the lives of the people at the bottom of the class system, make this novel a must-read for everyone, regardless of their age.
As we are living some turbulent times, in which the rich are getting richer, the poor even poorer, being more oppressed and subjugated by the economic conditions created by capitalism, this book could seem like that grain of hope that sometimes is needed for survival. It is a slap, a hard slap on the culture of #RiseAndGrind of today, calling for an awake call regarding the situation of the oppressed people.
Give up and follow the oppressor with the promise of living a good life, according to their terms, under a system that continuously oppresses you, or fight against it, with the hope of seeing the results of your work one day.
It is a manifesto. A manifesto of power. Not power coming from the top that we see in the books written about statesman and how they used the tools they have had to create state balance, but rather from the bottom. It is about survival, surviving the tough conditions created in prison, not to rehabilitate you and to let you reintegrate into society, but rather to destroy you, to push you down under the iron thumb of the system, until they have modelled out of you what they have wanted.
In a nutshell, read the book. Fuck the system, fuck the ones telling you that under their rule our life will be better. We need emancipation of us, wage-labourers, intellectual slaves under a mechanism based on domination and expansion, of the people from the bottom.