When the state becomes buoyant with the possibility of improvement, he swells up like a hot air balloon, causing speculation that a curse has been put upon him.”The playfulness with language you find in the novel is very much to do with the language it was written in,” the author explains “‘Pregnancy’ is a phrase as well as a term in Gikuyu. So when there are strange things happening, you say, ‘She is pregnant’ – as with possibilities. So it’s a kind of warning.”Although the leader’s Westernised suits recall Arap Moi’s jackal dapperness, Wa Thiong’o insists that this is not just a novel about Kenya and the failures of aid. “I was drawing from lots of Third World dictatorships: I was thinking of Moi, but also of Mobutu, Idi Amin and Pinochet They were all on my mind…

“All the characters perform themselves; they are inventing themselves, all the time.” This is especially true of the ruler, whose sense of self-importance is so large that he literally becomes the body politic. Nyawira occasionally sits in for him when he cannot make his engagements.”The trickster character is very important in this book,” Wa Thiong’o says. In this book I wanted to show everything – the influence of aid, the neocolonialism of capital, and how this affects things for the people.”At the crux of the resistance are a young beggar named Kamiti and a revolutionary he falls in love with, Nyawira. Kamiti discovers he has the capabilities of a seer when he sets up shop as a fictional wizard, dispensing advice to people who want to crush their enemies. An underground resistance called Movement for the Voice of the People protests against his ceremonies, while long lines of unemployed workers betray his failure to provide for his people.”When people talk about Africa,” Wa Thiong’o says, “they often only talk about it through one lens – so they blame its lack of progress on its people, or its landscape. For the ruler’s birthday, this group suggests building a tower up to heaven so that the ruler can speak directly to God.For funding, Aburiria’s majestically self-important ruler turns to the Global Bank for cash, but he must constantly fight against the mockery of the public. One has surgically enlarged his ears to prove he always has an ear to the ground; another has had plastic surgery on his eyes to show that he has his eyes on the public.

“If I had published this book first,” he says, holding up the English edition, “this book” – he pats the Kenyan edition – “would not exist.”Set in the fictional African republic of Aburiria, the novel conjures a ruler who has surrounded himself with comically sycophantic cabinet ministers. Meanwhile, Wa Thiong’o has laboured to bring his magnum opus from Gikuyu into English – no small feat when the book runs to 766 pages. “The first time you are mapping the terrain,” he says, “the second time, translating it, you are merely following it.” The novel is now published in Britain as Wizard of the Crow (Harvill Secker, £17.99), and Wa Thiong’o will be speaking at the Edinburgh book festival on Monday 14 August.Sitting on his back patio in front of a garden of mango and avocado trees grown by his wife, water trickling from a fountain, Wa Thiong’o explains why he felt compelled to write the novel in Gikuyu. “We do not speak of that,” she remembers being told.Neither Wa Thiong’o nor his wife have complied.

While the robbery and rape trial drags on, Njeeri has spoken out about her experience. “He is so dark,” Njeeri says, her eyes welling with tears, “my husband was literally branded.”The couple emerged from hospital a day later, and Wa Thiong’o issued a profoundly sad but generous statement “We have to keep rising up,” he said. “The Kenyans who attacked me do not represent the spirit of the new Kenya.” Messengers then came to the hospital to warn his wife against speaking out. “I kept calling for help,” she remembers, “and they kept trying to hush me.” When Wa Thiong’o tried to intervene, he was burned with cigarettes on his forehead and arms. “At the airport the crowds were there,” he recalls, “some weeping, some holding onto books. All the newspapers headlined my talk.”
“Some of the books were covered in dirt,” his wife says.

“Because they had to bury them – to hide them – when his books were banned.” And then things went horribly awry. On 11 August 2004, intruders broke into the apartment where they were staying. “We felt that this was no ordinary robbery,” Wa Thiong’o recalls. “Because they didn’t take anything first, they just sort of hung around, waiting for something to happen.