Ghana Must Go
A Novel
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4.2 • 94 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A “buoyant” and “rapturous” debut novel (The Wall Street Journal) about the transformative power of unconditional love
Electric, exhilarating, and beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go introduces the world to Taiye Selasi, a novelist of extraordinary talent. In a sweeping narrative that takes readers from Accra to Lagos to London to New York, it is at once a portrait of a modern family and an exploration of the importance of where we come from to who we are.
A renowned surgeon and failed husband, Kweku Sai dies suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of his death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Moving with great elegance through time and place, Ghana Must Go charts their circuitous journey to one another and, along the way, teaches us that the truths we speak can heal the wounds we hide.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Selasi's gorgeous debut is a thoughtful look at how the sacrifices we make for our family can be its very undoing. After arriving in America from Ghana, a promising but penniless young man, Kweku Sai, becomes a famed surgeon living in Boston with his wife, Fola, and children, proof of the American dream. Years later, now 57 and married to another woman, Kweku, back in Ghana, is dying in the garden of his home in Accra. After his death, Fola and their four grown children gather in Ghana for the funeral of the man who abandoned them 16 years ago. This emotional reunion reveals to what extent Kweku fractured his beloved family by leaving them. The twins, Taiwo and Kehinde, once inseparable, have not spoken in 18 months; wounded by something neither will disclose, their bond has been eroded by anguish. Olu, the eldest, emulates his father in business but wants his marriage to be "something better than" the family he knows. And the youngest, Sadie, feels inadequate in the shadow of her successful siblings. Reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri but with even greater warmth and vibrancy, Selasi's novel, driven by her eloquent prose, tells the powerful story of a family discovering that what once held them together could make them whole again.
Customer Reviews
Very good
The characters were excellent and the story good.
An achingly beautiful masterpiece
Powerfully relatable, especially as a Ghanian diaspora kid who was born in America, grew up in Africa and studied medicine in the hospitals referenced in the book. The depth she has imbued the characters with is uncanny and the realness is tempered to perfection. A book I will not be able to shake from my consciousness.
Awesome, emotional, inspirational
This book is amazing. Her writing style is excellent and I adulate her for writing this piece of work. She was very detailed about the characters and I hope she writes another book like Ghana Must Go.