The Healers

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African history turns on a tension between divisive forces, exploiting ethnic and class differences for quick profits, and unifiers, sacrificing narrow sectional advantages for the greater good. Over the centuries, the divisive forces have ruined Africa by helping foreign invaders pillage our resources − from people in the past, to industrial metals and energy today. Less visible is the regenerative work of unifiers following an ancient vision of unity as source of social prosperity. In Kemet, such a group was the Shemsw Maât. In medieval Mali, a similar group framed the Union Charter.

In the 19th century, when Europeans and collaborators devised the poverty machine now camouflaged as independent states, one such group led resistance by reminding the population of our past unity, and advocating a rebirth of that unity.

These were The Healers. This is their story.

Additional information

Weight 0.7 kg
ISBN

9782911928154

Pages

350

Year Published

1978

Format

Paperback

Author Picture

Ayi Kwei Armah

Ayi Kwei Armah, (born 1939, Takoradi, Gold Coast [now Ghana]), Ghanaian novelist whose work deals with corruption and materialism in contemporary Africa.

Armah was educated in local mission schools and at Achimota College before going to the United States in 1959 to complete his secondary education at Groton School and his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University. He thereafter worked as a scriptwriter, translator, and English teacher in Paris, Tanzania, Lesotho, Senegal, and the United States, among other places.

In his first novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Armah showed his deep concern for greed and political corruption in a newly independent African nation. In his second novel, Fragments (1970), a young Ghanaian returns home after living in the United States and is disillusioned by the Western-inspired materialism and moral decay that he sees around him. The theme of return and disillusionment continued in Why Are We So Blest? (1971), but with a somewhat wider scope. In Two Thousand Seasons (1973) Armah borrowed language from the African dirge and praise song to produce a chronicle of the African past, which is portrayed as having a certain romantic perfection before being destroyed by Arab and European despoilers. The Healers (1979), Armah’s fifth novel, explores a young man’s quest to become a practitioner of traditional medicine while the Asante empire falls to British forces. Armah took an extended break from publishing before releasing Osiris Rising in 1995. The novel examines the struggles of independent Africa and the lingering effects of colonialism. His later books included KMT: In the House of Life (2002) and The Resolutionaries (2013).

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