Ghana Must Go

Häftade böcker. Penguin Books Ltd. 2013. 318 sidor.

A stunning novel, spanning generations and continents, "Ghana Must Go" by rising star Taiye Selasi is a tale of family drama and forgiveness, for fans of Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This is the story of a family - of the simple, devastating ways in which families tear themselves apart, and of the long, troubled journeys that they make to bring themselves together again. It is the story of a family who take generations to make a good life for themselves only to see it crumble in an evening; a Ghanaian father, Kwaku, who becomes a highly respected surgeon in the USA only to be disillusioned by a grotesque injustice; his Nigerian wife, Fola, who builds their family with him only to be abandoned in his wake; their eldest son, Olu, determined in the years that follow to reconstruct the life his father should have had; their twins, star-student Taiwo and acclaimed artist Kehinde, both brilliant but scarred and flailing; their youngest, Sadie, jealously in love with her beautiful college friend, suffocating under her stricken mother's love. All of them sent reeling on their disparate paths into the world. But it is also the story of a family who make that journey back to one another. A family reunited, initially, by grief. A family absolved, ultimately, by that bitter but most tenuous bond, family love. "Ghana Must Go" interweaves the many stories of their lives in a rich and moving drama of separation and reunion, spanning generations and cultures from West Africa to New England, London, New York and back again. It is a debut novel of blazing originality and startling power by a writer of remarkable gifts. ""Ghana Must Go" is both a fast moving story of one family's fortunes and an ecstatic exploration of the inner lives of its members. With her perfectly-pitched prose and flawless technique, Selasi does more than merely renew our sense of the African novel: she renews our sense of the novel, period. An astonishing debut". (Teju Cole, author of, "Open City"). Taiye Selasi was born in London and raised in Massachusetts. She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale and an M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford. "The Sex Lives of African Girls" ("Granta", 2011), Selasi's fiction debut, appears in Best American Short Stories 2012. She lives in Rome.