Novel
The Narrow Path
Francis Selormey · 1966
Synopsis
Kofi is born in a village on the coast of Ghana. His paternal grandfather was a fisherman; his father, who went to school, became a teacher, then headmaster of several mission schools, a stubborn man who means to keep him on the straight and narrow. The boy loves him, but he is torn between this overly strict father, attached to Christian and Western manners, and what tradition gives him, that African heritage which Christianity covers only on the surface. The novel tells the other side of childhood, with the intensity of a child's emotions.
Context
The novel appeared in 1966 in London, as number 27 in Heinemann's African Writers Series, and the same year in New York from Praeger. Albert Gérard sees in it the coming-of-age novel of a Ghanaian schoolboy, largely autobiographical: the author, born on the same coast, also attended the mission school. It was his only novel; he also wrote film scripts. The French translation by Étienne Galle appeared in 1998 from Dapper under the title Kofi, l'enfant du Ghana.
Who it is for
A short novel in English, translated into French in 1998; a childhood narrative that can be read without knowing anything about Ghana.
Prizes and reception
Its American publisher presented it as an evocation of childhood of rare accuracy; the New Statesman reviewed it as early as 1966.