Kofi Awoonor

Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor (1935-2013 )

African Writing in English

Ghanaian poet and novelist. His works in English focus on life in Ghana following independence from the United Kingdom in 1957, but they also draw heavily from the traditional literature of the Ewe culture in which he grew up.His first novel, This Earth, My Brother...:An Allegorical Tale of Africa (1971), remains his most widely read work. In it he writes of a young lawyer’s coming to terms with post-colonial West African society. As in his early poetry, Awoonor employs rhythms and motifs from traditional Ewe dirges to express the alienation and anguish that demand a restructuring, refocusing, and revitalizing of individual and communal order in contemporary Africa.In his second novel, Comes the Voyager at Last (1991), Awoonor examines the process of an African American coming to Africa and finding his roots.