Book Review: The Perfect Nine

The Perfect Nine: The Story of the Original Feminists

by Riddhi Kanetar

Mother Earth. Motherland. Mother-tongue. The land which we inhabit, the nation from which we descend, the culture that we speak, is distinctly feminised. Although the nation-state is a relatively modern social construct, these tropes have predated the ideological advent of nationalism. Indeed, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s ‘genre-bending epic’, The Perfect Nine, is a testament to the potency of women, both as the founding figures of a primordial cultural tradition, as well as the embodiment of strength.

Ngugi is a revered figure in the post-colonial canon, and this book exemplifies why. He seamlessly amalgamates cross-cultural literary traditions, from Kenyan Gikuyu to classical Homeric, to construct a unique body of work. Although it is labelled as a novel, The Perfect Nine reads closer to an epic, due to its distinctly rhythmic verse. In doing so, Ngugi has privileged an oral mode of storytelling that is native to Kenya’s own literary history. Like many traditional epic poems, this one starts by narrating the origins of Kenya’s tribes: Ngai, the creator of the world, offered the rich lands of Kenya to Gikuyu, the first man, and Mumbi, the first woman. The two then had ten daughters—known as ‘The Perfect Nine’, or according to Ngugi, ‘the original feminists’.

But these women are not just the daughters of Gikuyu and Mumbi. Throughout the narrative, Ngugi is consciously shaping their own individual identities. When 99 suitors arrive to seek the hands of these women, they are sent on a journey to prove themselves. But contrary to fairy tales, wherein the socially-conditioned prince thinks it is his sole responsibility to save the princess, it is the Perfect Nine who outperform their suitors. Their valour is unmatched and emblematises the strength of the Gikuyu people, from whom Ngugi is descended.

No one weaves allegory quite like Ngugi. He invokes many tropes from Kenyan mythology, particularly through the allegorical references to the monsters that the Nine encounter, to represent the struggles that the Nine face in their journey. Yet what I found interesting was the modern resonance of these ideas. The Nine face ogres; they face crocodiles; they face lions—all of whom symbolise certain sociocultural vices in a modern nation. Ogres, in much of his work, are portrayed as acolytes of materialism and greed. Ngugi knew the challenges posed to a nation by capitalism, and particularly

neo-colonialism. Their encounter with these figures thus serves as a proleptic warning to the Kenyan people, and a reminder of the Perfect Nine’s resilience against these iniquities. He slowly embeds a message of collective empowerment to his readership, subverting the status quo through his symbolism.

In Decolonising the Mind, Ngugi asserts that: “How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture, at their places, politics and at the social production of wealth, at their entire relationship to nature and to other beings.”

His literary craft is therefore not just a retelling of Gikuyu folklore, but an act of resilience against the cultural hegemony imposed upon the Kenyan people. By writing this epic in Gikuyu, his mother-tongue, Ngugi is reclaiming his own language, and rejecting the colonial tongue, in order to regain a degree of self-representation. Indeed, by rewriting the story of the Perfect Nine in Homeric verse and then retranslating his original Gikuyu version into English, Ngugi is asserting the position of non-European art forms within the wider cultural canon. He deftly undermines the sole dominance of the Western epic tradition above the Kenyan folkloric one.

“I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, an African language, is part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenyan and African peoples... I want (Kenyans) to transcend colonial alienation” (Decolonising the Mind, 28).

This book is not just a narrativization of Kenya’s rich history, but a medium through which his readership can feel energised. Entrenched in the linguistic fabric of this novel is a staunch sense of anti-imperialist feminism, one which illuminates the primordial strength of Kenyan women throughout time.

“Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world” (Decolonising the Mind, 16).

The Perfect Nine is an expression of this. Gikuyu, as a language, not only carries culture but becomes culture. Through this mode of linguistic self-representation, Ngugi asserts the autonomy of the Kenyan people, a feat which is especially liberating in a postcolonial age.