'Meditative, gestural, philosophic: a brave reinvention of the immigrant narrative ... Unprecedented' Taiye Selasi
'I read this novel very slowly. I didn't want to miss anything ... It is a rich, beautiful book and when I got to the end, I wanted to start again' Chibundu Onuzo
Maya grows up in Germany knowing that her parents are different: from one another, and from the rest of the world. Her reserved, studious father is distant; and her beautiful, volatile mother is a whirlwind, with a penchant for lavish shopping sprees and a mesmerising power for spinning stories of the family's former glory β of what was had, and what was lost.
And then Kojo arrives one Christmas, like an annunciation: Maya's cousin, and her mother's godson. Kojo has a way with words β a way of talking about Ghana, and empire, and what happens when a country's treasures are spirited away by colonialists. For the first time, Maya has someone who can help her understand why exile has made her parents the way they are. But then Maya and Kojo are separated, shuttled off to school in England, where they come face to face with the maddening rituals of Empire.
Returning to Ghana as a young woman, Maya is reunited with her powerful but increasingly troubled cousin. Her homecoming will set off an exorcism of their family and country's strangest, darkest demons. It is in this destruction's wake that Maya realises her own purpose: to tell the story of her mother, her cousin, their land and their loss, on her own terms, in her own voice. **
Review
"Meditative, gestural, philosophic: a brave reinvention of the immigrant narrative, unapologetically inward-facing, seductively lyric. Cesaire's Notebook meets Duras' Lover. Unprecedented." - Taiye Selasi, author of GHANA MUST GO "I read this novel very slowly. I didn't want to miss anything. Maya's story is a journey through Akan history and culture, through migrating and returning home, through colonial subjugation and an assertion of African identity. It is a rich, beautiful book and when I got to the end, I wanted to start again" - Chibundu Onuzo, author of WELCOME TO LAGOS and THE SPIDER KING'S DAUGHTER "It is a rare kind of woman who enjoys a project so vast that itβs practically unfinishable, but Nana Oforiatta Ayim, a Ghanaian gallerist, writer, and historian, never quits what she has started." - Vogue "Ghanaian art historian, writer, and filmmaker Nana Oforiatta-Ayim is one of the foremost architects of the contemporary African arts scene . . . building a flourishing arts ecosystem." - OkayAfrica
About the Author
Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a writer, art historian, and filmmaker whose work has appeared at the New Museum, the Tate Modern, and elsewhere. As founder of the ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge, she pioneered a pan-African Cultural Encyclopedia. Recently appointed a TORCH Global South Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, she is also the recipient of an Art + Technology Award from LACMA, and the inaugural Soros Arts Fellowship. The God Child is her first novel. She lives in Accra.