Africa's best books and more...
Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story is a book about the choices we make and the end result of whatever that choice is. The book confronts the challenges the married working class African woman faces as opposed to the men. It’s a story about what we want not always being what we need.
Set in the city of Accra, Ghana during colonial rule, Cloth Girl is about how an affluent man’s desire changed the course of a young girl’s life. At the center of the story is Matilda, a young Ga girl of fourteen. One fateful day, she carries some important documents to give to give to her uncle, who works for an influential lawyer. While there, she catches the lawyer’s attention.
Ayitteh offers a way out for Africa to get rid of its ‘leaky begging bowl’ by advocating a return to the indigenous economic systems castigated before by the elites as backward and primitive. He argues that Africa’s indigenous systems have a long history of free trade and free markets that can be harnessed along with increased investment, both foreign and domestic.
Professor George Ayittey is a Ghanaian economist, author and president of the Free Africa Foundation, which is based in Washington DC, USA. Dr. Ayittey is, perhaps, better known for his international activism than for his academic work. He has long argued that “Africa is poor because she is not free”.
Africa Book Club interviews Benjamin Kwakye, one of Africa’s most successful contemporary writers. An award winning author, whose book, “The Sun by Night” won the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Africa Region), he is currently based in the US, where he practises law. He is also a director for a non-governmental organization that promotes science education in Africa. Kwakye’s latest book, The Other Crucifix, came out in late 2010 and was published by Ayebia Clarke Publishing.
Benjamin Kwakye’s latest book, The Other Crucifix, tells the story of Jojo Badu, a young man from Ghana who wins a scholarship to study in the USA at one of the country’s most prestigious universities.
In this month’s Writer’s Spotlight, Africa Book Club interviews South African author, Manu Herbstein, whose book Ama, A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade won the Best First Book: Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2002. Manu is currently based in Ghana, where he has lived since 1970. He visits South Africa regularly.
In this interview, Manu talks about his early years, life as a writer, the challenges of finding a publisher and how he got his first break. He also tells us about his role in the anti-apartheid movement. Manu’s latest book, The Brave Music of a Distant Drum won an honourable mention in the 2010 Burt Award for Ghana and will be published in Canada in late 2011 or early 2012
Chosen by the New York Times as one its 100 notable books of 2010, Kwame Appiah’s latest book, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, is a philosophical work that puts honor at the centre of moral change.
For a man who was raised in Ghana, educated in England, and who has taught philosophy on three continents, it is, perhaps, not surprising that his latest work is global in every sense.
In this deeply symbolic book published in 1968, Ayi Kwei Amar vividly captures the seemingly endless spiral of corruption, moral decadence and spiritual death in post-colonial Ghana.
The plot in Tail of the Blue Bird is set in Ghana, oscillating between Accra the capital city and the village of Sonokrom, where most of action takes place. A local politician orders an investigation after his girlfriend discovers a mutilated body in a hut when she goes to visit her village of Sonokrom. Initially, the villagers refuse to cooperate with the investigators, preferring to resolve the matter in their traditional old way.
 |
