The God Child - Hardcover

Ayim, Nana Oforiatta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408882426 ISBN 13: 9781408882429

Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus, 2019

Synopsis

'Meditative, gestural, philosophic: a brave reinvention of the immigrant narrative ... Unprecedented' Taiye Selasi

'I read this novel very slowly. I didn't want to miss anything ... It is a rich, beautiful book and when I got to the end, I wanted to start again' Chibundu Onuzo

Maya grows up in Germany knowing that her parents are different: from one another, and from the rest of the world. Her reserved, studious father is distant; and her beautiful, volatile mother is a whirlwind, with a penchant for lavish shopping sprees and a mesmerising power for spinning stories of the family's former glory - of what was had, and what was lost.

And then Kojo arrives one Christmas, like an annunciation: Maya's cousin, and her mother's godson. Kojo has a way with words - a way of talking about Ghana, and empire, and what happens when a country's treasures are spirited away by colonialists. For the first time, Maya has someone who can help her understand why exile has made her parents the way they are. But then Maya and Kojo are separated, shuttled off to school in England, where they come face to face with the maddening rituals of Empire.

Returning to Ghana as a young woman, Maya is reunited with her powerful but increasingly troubled cousin. Her homecoming will set off an exorcism of their family and country's strangest, darkest demons. It is in this destruction's wake that Maya realises her own purpose: to tell the story of her mother, her cousin, their land and their loss, on her own terms, in her own voice.

About this title

Review:

Meditative, gestural, philosophic: a brave reinvention of the immigrant narrative, unapologetically inward-facing, seductively lyric ... Unprecedented (Taiye Selasi)

A cultural juggernaut (Harper's Bazaar)

Hugely readable . Dizzying . Intriguing and engrossing . A classic coming-of-age narrative . Deeply concerned with Ghanaian history and the psychic dislocations of exile (Daily Mail)

I read this novel very slowly. I didn't want to miss anything ... It is a rich, beautiful book and when I got to the end, I wanted to start again (Chibundu Onuzo)

It is a rare kind of woman who enjoys a project so vast that it's practically unfinishable, but Nana Oforiatta Ayim, a Ghanaian writer and historian, never quits what she has started (Vogue)

One of the foremost architects of the contemporary African arts scene (Okay Africa)

Book Description:

A debut novel by one of the most exciting African literary voices to emerge in recent years

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1408882426
• ISBN 13: 9781408882429
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256