PEN America has named African author and potential Nobel Prize awardee, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, winner of the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

This is hardly surprising as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is a god among men; one of the few living writers who have held the world spellbound for decades, with an impeccable style and a defiant way of life that speaks volumes (of his creed and evangelism for identity).

The author of A Grain of Wheat was confered the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, for his commitment to “telling the stories of a country and a people whose political destiny was brutally interrupted by outsiders,” the web post reads.

His history with incarceration was also noted, “in 1977, when he [Ngugi Wa Thiong’o] was held without trial in the maximum-security prison at Kamiti, he used toilet paper to write Devil on the Cross, not in English, the language he had used until then, but in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. His refusal to be silenced and his insistence on the value of indigenous languages has inspired a generation of younger writers.”

Considering Nabokov’s versatility, ingenuity, and devotion to style, it is not hard to see why Ngugi Wa Thiong’o was awarded the Pen/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. An honor that is said to “represent the highest level of achievement in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and/or drama, and is of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship.”

The panel of judges for the award consists of: Travid Treuer, Laila Lalami, & Mónica de la Torre. This career achievement award will be celebrated at the 2022 Literary Awards, scheduled to be held on February 28, in New York City.

The full list of awardees for the career achievement award include Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Pen/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature; Elaine May, PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award; and Jackie Sibblies Drury, for PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award.