Witness the following description of a Party man, corrupt by definition: "His mouth had the rich stench of rotten menstrual blood. I have no doubt that years from now, my enduring memories of this novel will be of the nauseating stench of garbage, the wet slime of fresh vomit, the numerous images of human excrement caked onto latrines and railings and faces. In Ghana, the period in question is the 1960s.Īyi Kwei Armah has a particular fondness for scatological images that meshes well with his chosen message. Hope was abating, disillusionment with Independence was beginning to take hold, and people were resigning themselves to the sad realities of poverty and inequality. This shit-encrusted tale of corruption and despair belongs to a tradition of post-colonial African literature that is unflinchingly critical of national politics. He lived in Dakar, Senegal, in the 1980s and taught at Amherst and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. From 1968-1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. In 1964, Armah returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo School.īetween 19, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris.
Armah then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine Révolution Africaine.
After graduating, he entered Harvard University, receiving a degree in sociology. Born to Fante-speaking parents, with his father's side Armah descending from a royal family in the Ga tribe in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, Armah, having attended the renowned Achimota School, left Ghana in 1959 to attend Groton School in Groton, MA.
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