Novel · A way to begin
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Ayi Kwei Armah · 1968
Synopsis
Ghana, 1965. A railway employee, whom the novel does not name, refuses the bribe of a timber merchant who wants a place on the trains, when everyone around him lets himself be bought. His wife, Oyo, reproaches him for an honesty that deprives their children of comfort, and compares him to a bird that likes worms but refuses to dig through the filth. A former classmate, Koomson, now a minister, comes back into their lives with a deal involving fishing boats. Refuse, slimy banisters and latrines hold a place in the narrative that critics have commented on at length.
Context
The novel appeared in 1968 in Boston, from Houghton Mifflin, then in 1969 in Heinemann's African Writers Series. It takes place between 1965 and the coup of February 1966 that overthrew Nkrumah, and its title, with its spelling mistake, takes up an inscription painted on a bus. Chinua Achebe judged its author alienated and reproached him for setting the story in Ghana; Armah answered him with several abusive letters. The French translation by Josette and Robert Mane appeared from Présence africaine in 1976.
Who it is for
Dense prose, deliberately crude, which owes as much to Joyce and Camus as to African novelists; Nkrumah's fall in 1966 sheds light on the anger of the book.
Prizes and reception
Received with often laudatory reviews, it made Armah a writer of worldwide reputation; it appears in 2022 on the Big Jubilee Read list.