A review by mad_taylh
Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

4.0

"The act of imprisoning Democrats, progressive intellectuals, and militant workers reveals many things. It is first an admission by the authorities that they know they have been seen. By signing the detention orders, they acknowledge that the people have seen through their official lies labeled as a new philosophy, their pretensions wrapped in three-piece suits and gold chains, their propaganda packed as religious truth, their plastic smiles ordered from abroad, their nationally televised charitable handouts and breast-beatings before the high altar, their high-sounding phrases and ready-to-shed tears at the site of naked children fighting cats and dogs for a trash heap, that all have seen these performances of benign benevolence for what they truly are: a calculated sugar-coating of the immoral sale and mortgage of a whole country, it's people and resources, to Euro-American and Japanese capital for a few million dollars in Swiss banks and a few token shares in foreign companies."