Ghana Must Go - Hardcover

Selasi, Taiye

3.85

11,736 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670919861 ISBN 13: 9780670919864

Publisher: Viking, 2013

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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 incredible lengths to which a family will go to put itself back together.

It is the story of one family, the Sais, whose good life crumbles in an evening; a Ghanaian father, Kweku Sai, who becomes a highly respected surgeon in the US only to be disillusioned by a grotesque injustice; his Nigerian wife, Fola, the beautiful homemaker abandoned in his wake; their eldest son, Olu, determined to reconstruct the life his father should have had; their twins, seductive Taiwo and acclaimed artist Kehinde, both brilliant but scarred and flailing; their youngest, Sadie, jealously in love with her celebrity best friend. All of them sent reeling on their disparate paths into the world. Until, one day, tragedy spins the Sais in a new direction.

This is the story of a family: torn apart by lies, reunited by grief. A family absolved, ultimately, by that bitter but most tenuous bond: familial love.

Ghana Must Go interweaves the stories of the Sais 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 extraordinary 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.

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Review:

This book is rich and deep, mesmerizing and spectacular. At times I felt it opened a portal onto something grand and profound about love and blood and the ties that bind. Read it and you will feel what great literature can do: you will feel you are more vividly alive (Anna Funder)

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)

An eye for the perfect detail . . . an unforgettable voice on the page . . . miss out on Ghana Must Go and you will miss one of the best new novels of the season (The Economist)

Taiye Selasi is the woman the literary world is drooling over . . . [Ghana Must Go] is technically ambitious, poetically dense . . . an unpredictable family story of love, abandonment, aspiration and migration (Claire Allfree Metro)

Taiye Selasi writes with glittering poetic command, a sense of daring, and a deep emotional investment in the lives and transformations of her characters . . . a powerful portrait of a broken family (Diana Evans Guardian)

A most impressive first novel. . . She manages a generous coverage of time and space with adroit concision, along with a vibrant range of characters. The family is so convincing, with those telling problems of divided culture. Very much a novel of today (Penelope Lively)

Taiye Selasi is a young writer of staggering gifts and extraordinary sensitivity. Ghana Must Go seems to contain the entire world, and I shall never forget it (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love)

With mesmerizing craftsmanship and massive imagination [Taiye Selasi] takes the reader on an unforgettable journey across continents and most importantly deeply into the lives of the people whom she writes about. She de-"exoticizes" whole populations and demographics and brings them firmly into the readers view as complicated and complex human beings. Ghana Must Go is a big novel, elemental, meditative, and mesmerizing (Sapphire, author of The Kid and Push)

In Ghana Must Go, Selasi drives the six characters skillfully through past and present, unearthing old betrayals and unexplained grievances at a delicious pace. By the time the surviving five convene at a funeral in Ghana, we are invested in their reconciliation--which is both realistically shaky and dramatically satisfying ... Narrative gold (Elle)

Selasi's ambition - to show her readers not "Africa" but one African family, authors of their own achievements and failures - is one that can be applauded no matter what accent you give the word (Nell Freudenberger The New York Times)

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