Ghana has a literature out of all proportion to its size, and most people living in Accra have read almost none of it. This is a way in.
The books below are, with few exceptions, cheaper here than anywhere else in the world — about ₵60 to ₵150 for a locally published edition. That is the single best argument for reading Ghanaian while you are here.
The founding generation
J.E. Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound (1911) — often described as the first novel in English by an African writer, and as much political argument as fiction. Kobina Sekyi’s play The Blinkards (1915) is funnier and still lands: a satire on coastal elites imitating the English.
R.E. Obeng, Eighteenpence (1943), is usually named as the first Ghanaian novel proper.
Kwame Nkrumah wrote a great deal and is worth reading as a primary source rather than as a summary of him — the autobiography, Africa Must Unite, Neo-Colonialism. Ghana is still arguing with these books.
The 1960s and 70s, which is the canon
Independence produced a generation whose work is still what Ghanaian schools teach and what the country quotes at itself.
Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968). A man who will not take bribes, in a country coming apart around the fall of Nkrumah. It is relentless, physically disgusted by corruption, and the most important Ghanaian novel there is. Start here, or start somewhere gentler and come back.
Ama Ata Aidoo (1942–2023), who is the other answer to “where do I start”. Begin with the play The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965) or the novel Changes (1991), which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Africa. Also Anowa, and Our Sister Killjoy. She was briefly Minister for Education, and she remains the writer Ghanaian women writers measure themselves against.
Kofi Awoonor (1935–2013), poet before novelist, who carried Ewe dirge-form into English. This Earth, My Brother and the collected poems. He was killed in the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi in 2013, having gone there for a literary festival.
Efua Sutherland (1924–1996), playwright and the person most responsible for there being a Ghanaian theatre and a Ghanaian children’s literature at all. The Marriage of Anansewa. She founded the Ghana Drama Studio; the children’s park in Accra carries her name.
Also from this stretch: Amu Djoleto (Money Galore, The Strange Man), Asare Konadu (A Woman in Her Prime), Cameron Duodu (The Gab Boys), and the poets Kwesi Brew and Atukwei Okai.
The Accra novel
If you want the city itself:
Kojo Laing, Search Sweet Country (1986). Accra in the 1970s, in prose that does whatever it likes. Difficult, strange, and the best thing anyone has written about this city.
Amma Darko, Faceless, which is set among children living on the streets of Accra and is taught in Ghanaian schools. Also Beyond the Horizon and The Housemaid.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Tail of the Blue Bird (2009) — a forensic pathologist trained in Britain, a village, and a case that does not fit the method. Ga Accra written from the inside.
Kwei Quartey writes crime fiction set here: the Inspector Darko Dawson novels, then the Emma Djan series. Accra as a working city, seen procedurally.
Writing now
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (2016) — two half-sisters in eighteenth century Fanteland and seven generations after them, one chapter each. Born in Mampong, raised in Alabama. Transcendent Kingdom followed.
Peace Adzo Medie, His Only Wife (2020). A marriage arranged to a man who does not turn up to his own wedding. Funny, sharp about class and Accra money.
Ayesha Harruna Attah, The Hundred Wells of Salaga, on slavery within precolonial Ghana — a subject Ghanaian writing has generally avoided.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim, The God Child. She also runs the ANO Institute and has done as much as anyone for how Ghana presents its own art.
Taiye Selasi, Ghana Must Go (2013), and the essay that gave “Afropolitan” to the language.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Powder Necklace, and children’s books since.
Nana Awere Damoah is the contemporary essayist Ghanaians actually read — I Speak of Ghana, Sebitically Speaking — and a case study in Ghanaian self-publishing that worked.
Yepoka Yeebo, Anansi’s Gold (2023), non-fiction: the story of John Ackah Blay-Miezah and a fortune that never existed. It is a fraud story, a Ghanaian history and better than most novels.
Manu Herbstein’s Ama won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book in 2002.
Children’s and young adult
Meshack Asare is the senior figure — Sosu’s Call is the one to start with, and it is genuinely a great picture book by any standard. Elizabeth-Irene Baitie and Ruby Yayra Goka both write for older children and have won the Burt Award for African Literature.
This is the strongest and cheapest part of Ghanaian publishing. Buy freely.
Ghanaian publishers
Worth knowing by name, because buying direct is cheapest and because these are who keep the backlist in print: Sub-Saharan Publishers, Afram Publications, Sedco, Smartline, Woeli Publishing Services and Digibooks.
Where the literary life is
- Pa Gya! A Literary Festival, run in Accra by the Writers Project of Ghana, which also runs the long-standing Ghana Voices reading series.
- The Ghana Association of Writers, the national writers’ body.
- The Pan African Writers’ Association, headquartered in Accra at PAWA House.
- Bookshop and gallery readings, which are announced on Instagram and almost nowhere else. That is genuinely how you find out.
- Book clubs, of which Accra has many and none of them advertise. Ask.
— Things to do in Accra — Festivals in Ghana
If you read one thing
For the city: Search Sweet Country. For the country: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. For pleasure: His Only Wife. For a child: Sosu’s Call.