Ngugi renounced writing in English in July 1977 at the Nairobi launch of Petals of Blood, saying that he wished to express himself in a language that his mother and ordinary people could understand.
If this is true, then the theory that Melville renounced writing after "Pierre" is just wrong, and the mysterious leap from "Pierre" to the work he published after a silence, the very different "Bartleby the Scrivener," can be explained in a new way.
(She was born in the faith, renounced it, wrote about vampires, then rejoined Catholicism 12 years ago and wrote a couple of novels imagining the life of Jesus Christ).
Dismayed, he renounced the writing life, noting in his diary, "I have at this point and definitively eliminated from my life that ridiculous and harmful thing called literature".
In December, he renounced his atheism, writing on his Facebook page, "I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important".
This is not true of the great Kokinshū poets of the 9th century Ono Komachi, Lady Ise, Ariwara Narihira, and Tsurayuki himself but even Buddhist priests, who presumably had renounced carnal love, wrote love poetry at the court competitions, and it is hard to detect any difference between such poems and those of actual lovers.
Last week, Maliki also called on members of the disbanded Ba'ath party to publicly renounce it in writing, threatening persecution if they fail to comply.
Now that he had reached the midpoint of his life – he turned 40 last year — he said he wanted to renounce violence and write in the reggae genre, which he called "music of love".
A Palestinian poet imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for renouncing Islam has written his first poem since he was incarcerated two years ago, provoked by the loss of his father who died after hearing his son was to be beheaded.
Although Wuorinen has not renounced the twelve-tone writing with which he made his name, he, too, now deposits triads in his scores as if they were pillow mints, and even indulges in pastiches of jazz and blues.
"[Abbott] has to tell the people when he renounced his British citizenship", Magrathea wrote on the blog Independent Australia.
