I have never read a Ngugi book. Which one would be a good recommendation?
You can read ;
1. Weep Not Child
2. The River Between
3. A Grain of Wheat
After that he becomes a politician cum history revisionist with a mission to glorify Mau mau and oppose Moi. He was in effect nurturing Kikuyu Nationalism while cheating the rest of us that he was fighting for Kenya.
Petals of blood is the most mediocre of his books.
His book: Ngigi Detained is a diatribe against Moi while carefully avoiding blaming Kenyatta.
All the others after Decolonizing the mind are written for him by his second wife (the one Mungiki cut by force when sodomizing Ngugi).
As for him writing in Gikuyu ... bullocks! I spent time at Iowa University and figured out how he does it. The wife writes the books in English, they then translate to Gikuyu.