Armah, Ayi Kwei (1939- )
Ghanaian novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, considered one of Africa’s
most important writers. Armah also is one of the sharpest interpreters of the
condition of African nations—past, present, and future.Armah’s first novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
(1968), delivers a strong critique of corruption in newly independent African
states and remains highly controversial. In the novel, he uses images of filth,
slime, excrement, and rot to convey the greed, bribery, and fraud that threaten
to strangle the best qualities of a new African nation. Armah’s second novel, Fragments (1970), is considered partly
autobiographical. It deals with a young African man, Baako, who returns home
after study in the United States to find his family caught up in material
acquisition. The novel’s symbolism is embedded in the story of a traditional
“outdooring”ceremony for a newborn. The family speeds up the ceremony to reap
the gifts that accompany it, resulting in the child’s death. Why Are We So Blest? (1972) is a
portrait of three would-be revolutionaries in a fictional north African
country, each struggling with the loss of their idealism.Perhaps Armah’s most
stunning achievement is Two Thousand
Seasons (1973), a historical novel set in precolonial Africa. It deals with
migrations of peoples, enslavement of Africans by both Arabs and Europeans, and
the possibility of resistance to colonialism. Armah creates a griot (a traditional
storyteller-historian) from an ancient African community to tell the history of
the struggle of Africans. The Healers
(1978) continues this theme, returning to Africa’s precolonial past and the
dissolution of the Ashanti Kingdom in the 1800s to examine causes of
contemporary political ruin. The later novel Osiris Rising: A Novel of Africa Past, Present and Future (1995) adds another volume to Armah’s commentary
on African history.
No comments:
Post a Comment