The Audacity Of Art In The Interrogation Of A Continent Struggling WithItsModernity: Reading Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Wizard Of The Crow

Art with specific reference to literature is a saw-toothed weapon for the passing of social commentaries consequently; the place of art in the holding up to ridicule and correction of societal foibles cannot be disremembered in our global existence. This paper makes a literary incursion into how social behaviour affects political views and vice versa by using Aburiria as a metaphor for the economic and socio-political hypocrisies that constitute the ailing realities of African leadership and its modernity. Using the content-based methodology for gathering relevant data; this paper adopts the Marxist literary criticism to interrogate Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Wizard of the Crow. It is adopted as a theoretical framework to examine the revolutionary aesthetics in Ngugi’s novel under study with a view to reveal the place of the collective will of the common people in the struggle against existing bourgeoisie-induced forces that exploit their persons, labour and society. Our finding reveals that the solution to Africa’s problem is in Africa and not in the hands of governments of other nationalities as African leadership thinks. And this is the ideological thrust which constitutes Ngugi’s vision in his fictional art under study. This paper concludes that the African youth is essentially a force of hope for a better Africa.