Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o during an interview with The Standard on Feb 7, 2019. [File, Standard] Were it not for the grave claims about my alleged destitution in America, there is a comic feel to the fictive constructs that have emerged since my recent profile in The Guardian “went viral.” This calls to mind another spectre in 1986, when policemen were deployed to the streets to apprehend an insurgent whose name was Matigari, a character in my allegorical fiction by the same title. When they failed to find the suspect, they raided bookstores and carted copies away. That wasn’t the only instance when life was imitating…