The Kenyan writer, a perennial frontrunner for the Nobel Prize for Literature, saw the committee pass him over once again. But his time in prison in Kenya changed his life. “How come that a post-colonial African government has put me in prison for writing in an African language? … I had written a few plays in English, and novels in English, and I had not been in prison for being critical of the post-colonial system. So why now? And that question is what set in motion my thinking about the unequal and unequal relationship of power between languages. That thinking made me say no — from now onwards, I’ll be writing in my mother tongue.” – NPR