Benjamin Kwakye (born 7 January 1967) is a Ghanaian novelist and lawyer. [1] His first novel, The Clothes of Nakedness, won the 1999 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, best first book, Africa, and has been adapted for radio as a BBC Play of the Week. His novel The Sun by Night won the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book Africa. His novel The Other Crucifix won the 2011 IPPY award. [2] His is also the winner of the 2021 African Literature Association's Book of the Year Award for Creative Writing. He was a finalist for the 2019 Snyder Poetry Prize as well as the 2023 and 2024 Eyelands Book Awards.
Kwakye was born in Accra, Ghana and attended the Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School. He graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He is the author of several works of fiction and poetry, including a trilogy of the African migrant's experiences in the US (The Other Crucifix, The Three Books of Shama and The Count's False Banquet). His impressive epic poem that spans over 400 pages has been described by Kirkus Review as an "imaginative tale" of "rhyming quatrains" that move with "wit and grace" and "contains cutting insights into human nature." He has been described as staking a claim to being incontestably in the front rank of African writers and as arguably the most important novelist to come out of Ghana since Ayi Kwei Armah. Kwakye practices law as in-house counsel, and is a director of the African Education Initiative. [3] In his corporate legal career, he has worked with a number of private sector firms including Porter Wright, Abbott Laboratories, Hospira, Visa Inc. and General Motors.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1967.
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature but also includes literature produced in languages other than English.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1863.
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel and magnum opus, Things Fall Apart (1958), occupies a pivotal place in African literature and remains the most widely studied, translated, and read African novel. Along with Things Fall Apart, his No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) complete the "African Trilogy". Later novels include A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). In the West, Achebe is often referred to as the "father of African literature", although he vigorously rejected the characterization.
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Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
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B. Kojo Laing or Bernard Kojo Laing was a Ghanaian novelist and poet, whose writing is characterised by its hybridity, whereby he uses Ghanaian Pidgin English and vernacular languages alongside standard English. His first two novels in particular – Search Sweet Country (1986) and Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) – were praised for their linguistic originality, both books including glossaries that feature the author's neologisms as well as Ghanaian words.
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