Rebeka Njau (née Nyanjega; born 15 December 1932) was Kenya's first female playwright and a pioneer in the representation of African women in literature.

[1][2] Her family was Christian and she recalled the division this created with those around them:It was interesting for us, especially in our home, because we were surrounded by people [that] we would call primitive.

[10] Her son, Morille Njau, is an artist and a consultant based in the UK and her daughter Hana Njau-Okolo is a poet, and published author who lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.

[15] The Scar premiered at the Uganda National Theatre in 1963 and went on to be performed in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and the USA.

The main character is Mariana, a former prostitute who tries to help girls escape female genital mutilation, which she regards as a "brutal custom".

[16][17][19] In 1964, Njau won a prize in an East African novel competition with her manuscript Alone with the Fig Tree.

TransAfrica went bankrupt shortly afterwards, and Njau contacted Henry Chakava, editor of Heinemann Educational Books East Africa, to see if the novel could be republished.

At least one reviewer was left confused by the rapid shifts in plot and point of view,[22] but writing in 1982 Frank Birbalsingh concludes: "...it is clear that Njau is continuing the tradition of social realism, established in the modern African novel by Achebe's Things Fall Apart, updated by Armah's The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born, and made politically significant in the most recent writings of Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

The Sacred Seed is described by Alex Wanjala as a quasi-autobiographical novel that brings together elements of social realism and the supernatural.

He views the novel as Njau's attempt to expose the malaise in contemporary Kenyan society and its roots in patriarchal relations that stem from both the pre-colonial and colonial periods.

[26] In the words of The Daily Nation, the author "delves into the minds of her characters to reveal the psychological wounds they have suffered under patriarchy and dictatorship and their determination to heal the society.

Alex Wanjala has said: "Like Grace Ogot, Rebeka Njau is a very important writer in Kenya.... She addresses issues that affect women directly and then demonstrates how women's issues are symptomatic of a malaise in the larger Kenyan society.