Ghana Must Go

Front Cover
Viking, 2013 - Fiction - 318 pages

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, Kwaku 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 beautiful college 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 Gointerweaves 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.

'Most impressive. A novel of today.' Penelope Lively

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About the author (2013)

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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