Ngugi wa Thiong'o has become the first writer to be nominated for the International Booker Prize as both author and translator of the same book, and the first nominee writing in an indigenous African language. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a Noble favorite is among 13 authors nominated for the award for best translated fiction. He is nominated as writer and translator of the The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi, a novel-in-verse described by the judges as magisterial and poetic tale about women's place in a society of gods, and written in the Bantu language Gikuyu.
