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The River’s Power
“I know that my country must have this dam,” Enyonam Agbeko said. “I am reconciled, though the land I farmed for forty years is now flooded. My father and my grandfather and even his father farmed that land before me.” He shook his head and swallowed quickly as if there were a lump in his throat. “But,” he continued, “I cannot look at this lake without crying.”
A dam is built across the Volta River at Akosombo in Ghana. This historical novel tells, in absorbing detail, the background to the dam project, the intricacies of international funding, the problems of dam construction and the remarkable achievement of generating hydroelectric power. These are balanced against a human problem of the greatest magnitude and complexity – the resettlement of thousands of displaced people, flooded out of their ancestral homes by the resultant lake.
The River’s Power is a book about the ideals of a people, about their aspirations, about their hopes, about their sacrifices and about their remarkable achievements.
₵70.00The River’s Power
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Mutilated
Barbara Aseke, a ten-year-old primary school pupil, is brutally circumcised and dies from haemorrhage. Her needless death outrages the sensibilities of many, including Dr. Blankson who is unable to save her life. When, in spite of the tragedy, Dr. Blankson’s wife Sarah, wilfully submits herself and undergoes genital mutilation, she reveals the ethnic and cultural diversity that tears their marriage apart. Dutch missionary, Father Willem van Ruisdeal, concerned organisations, Dr. Yvonne Alhassan, Dr. Blankson and even a subdued Sarah, work tirelessly together to eradicate the harmful and obnoxious traditional practice, particularly in the north of Ghana.
The novel tells in lurid details the harrowing experiences and the suffering of millions of girls and women in Africa and thousands of African immigrants in the Western World.
₵35.00Mutilated
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Unexpected Joy at Dawn
Unexpected Joy at Dawn received a commendation in the Best First Book Prize, Africa Region, of the Commonweath Writers Prize.
‘Fifteen years ago’, Mama said, starting her story, ‘I came to Lagos from Ghana. I came to Nigeria because I was considered an alien in that country. The government of Ghana passed a law asking all aliens without resident permits to regularise their stay in the country. You see, my great, great grandparents had migrated to Ghana several years before, and regarded Ghana as their home…as for the reason possibly, it was because the opposition party then had hyped to monstrous heights that aliens were ruining the country; or the government of the time…blamed their failure to do things right on us ‘alien’ scapegoats… It was difficult to start life all over again, and even more difficult to learn that we were unwanted in a country we had come to regard as our own.’
This story of migration, identities and lives undermined by cynical and xenophobic politics pushed to its logical and terrible conclusion pertains to the Ghanaian orders of ‘alien compliance’ issued in 1970-1971, which was designed to force all non-ethnic Ghanaians, so called illegal immigrants, to return to their – so stipulated – ‘home’. the novel thus touches on concerns of deeper relevance to the politics of race and migration in the twenty first century.
₵40.00Unexpected Joy at Dawn
₵40.00