Ghana Must Go
Ghana Must Go begins with the slow-motion death of Kweku Sai, famed surgeon and father of four. His last moments are spent thinking about his estranged family, scattered from London to New York and Accra to Boston, who will soon reunite for the first time in years to mourn him.
The novel flits back and forth through time, revealing secrets, betrayals, and crimes that crisscross their relationships like scars.
Quote:
"The face was all angles and thick-lidded eyes too wide open and red-rimmed, a dull shade of brown, upturned nose, low-set mouth, the proportions the problem, thin cheeks far too narrow for features this wide. Almost ugly, thought Kehinde, though he used the word sparingly, and reverently, like beautiful, equally awed. It was a precious thing, ugliness, in humans, in nature; he noticed this, always, in airports, on trains: that for the most part most people looked fine (if unremarkable) with inoffensive features placed well, or well enough. He found he had to look to find ugliness, natural ugliness, no less than natural beauty, and trickier still, that no sooner had he found it and quietly thought a thing ugly than he found there in the ugliness a beauty of a kind."
Author:
Taiye Selasi has lived in London, Boston, New Delhi, New York, and Rome. Ghana Must Go is her first novel, and her story "The Sex Lives of African Girls" is featured in Granta's Best American Short Stories 2012.
Published: 2013
Length: 312 pages
Set in: Ghana