of the corrupt at the expense of the more intimate dilemmas of those who challenge them. But the poisonousness of its targets never infects the author's vision, nor his faith in people's power to resist. Perhaps that in itself is a triumph." For Aminatta Forna, writing in The Washington Post: "Wizard of the Crow is first and foremost a great, spellbinding tale, probably the crowning glory of Ngũgĩ's life's work. He has done for East Africa what Ahmadou Kourouma's Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote did for West Africa: He has turned the power of storytelling into a weapon against totalitarianism." From the perspective of Lindsay Barrett, Wizard of the Crow is "an incredible masterpiece": "This is a work that can genuinely be described as a tour de force. Apart from its substantial length and the prodigious feats of both linguistic dexterity and imaginative fertility displayed by Ngũgĩ in the course of telling his incredible tale, the book is simply a most impressive example of pure African storytelling. Although it is a complex satire on the exigencies of confusion and dictatorial ignorance that has bedevilled governance in many African nations of the post-colonial era, it is more than anything else a cracking adventure story as well as a fantastic psychological thriller. Ngũgĩ has managed to compose a believable tale out of the antics and presumptions of a most unbelievable set of characters. He keeps his readers enthralled through the credible emotional resemblance of the situations that he weaves to events in the contemporary history of several African nations." In The Independent, the review by Margaret Busby noted that Wizard of the Crow "is a remarkable demonstration of how memoir can be as much about inspiring the present as recalling the past. ... Moving, honest and informative, this is a book about the influence of stories, storytelling and storytellers. It is a reminder that every generation, however beleaguered, can dream to change the world." Further reading Scott Esposito, "Thrice Told Tales: How Stories Become Reality in Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow, The Quarterly Conversation. 2008. Raphael Dalleo, "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow and Postcolonial Pedagogy", Research in African Literatures, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 138–154. References 2006 novels Novels by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Novels set in fictional countries