Search Sweet Country - Softcover

Laing, B. Kojo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 057112996X ISBN 13: 9780571129966

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1988

Synopsis

Describes the experience of a corrupt government official, an idealistic professor, a bishop, a witch, and other characters living in Accra, Ghana, in 1975

About this title

From Library Journal

Here are two scintillating first novels set in contemporary central Africa: the first in Ghana, to the west, the second in Tanzania, to the east. Laing is a black Ghanian poet whose novel exuberantly reels with language and imagery reminiscent of the early Joyce. Set in Laing's own "sweet country," it revolves around a broad and colorful cast of characters: the student Kofi Loww, "now thirty and living on the wandering side of doubt"; Kojo Okay Pol, an optimist, "the monkey that believed he could climb down his own tail in any emergency"; Professor Sackey ("Professor Carry Yourself") and his wife Sofi; Bishop Budu and his assistant Osofo; and Beni Baidoo, the "shrewd and shriveled" old man who is Accra, Ghana, is "the bird standing alive by the pot that should receive it, and hoping that, after being defeathered, it would triumphantly fly out before it was fried." As a girl, taken on an oryx hunt by her father, Antonia was the first to spot an oryx; the animal's life was then spared. Now a doctor, back in her native Dar es Salaam, a white woman in a black-ruled country, her father dead, her mother returned to America, and their house seized by the government, Antonia does what she can to help the natives who come to her sick from poverty, hunger, squalor. The novel gracefully traces the friendship between Antonia and a young black woman she treats, Antonia mystified by Esther's spiritual healing abilities, Esther eager to learn the basics of anatomy and physiology and Western medicine. Two triumphant works, warmly recommended. Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 057112996X
• ISBN 13: 9780571129966
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308