Visions of the Future in East African Fiction: A Comparative Exploration of Selected Works in Kiswahili and English

Abstract

In his essay entitled: "The Social Responsibility of the East African Writer", Peter Nazareth argues that a writer has to respond to life around him/her. This means that a writer has to talk about the problems afflicting the people and how to cope with them. It is with this understanding that we talk about vision in this paper. A writer who is committed to serving the society by helping it to deal with its problems often provides the hope of a better tomorrow. Such a writer depicts the problems afflicting the people and then foretells of a future in which such problems are overcome. This is what a writer ' s vision is about. It is like a prophecy of a better society. Vision, therefore, in a literary context like this one, may be defined as the ability to foresee future developments and to communicate the same in literary works.   Ngugi wa Thiong ' o and Katama Mkangi are important Kenyan writers whose visions of a new Kenya come out clearly in their novels. Comparison of their works gives us a clear view of their visions.