Ngugi's entire novelistic output in examined, including his major works, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood and Matigari. Through a critique of these works, Ngugi's radical and sometimes ambivalent attitude towards independence (Uhuru) and the manufacturing of nationhood are assessed. Ogude also looks at the wider notion of the distinct boundaries between history and fiction which postcolonial literatures have sought to question.