When Ngugi wa Thiong'o arrives at the prestigious Makerere University, it embodies all the potential and excitement of the early 1960s.

Campus is a haven of opportunity for the brightest African students, a meeting place for thinkers and writers from all over the world, and its alumni are filling Africa's emerging political and cultural positions. Despite the challenges he faces as a young black man in a British colony, it is here that Ngugi begins to find his voice as a playwright, journalist and novelist, writing his first, pivotal works just as the countries of East Africa enter the final stages of their independence struggles.