The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
by Ayi Kwei Armah
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The central story in this book tells of an upright man resisting the temptations of easy bribes and easy satisfactions and winning for his honesty nothing but scorn.Tags
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This has been on my tbr for a very long time, being cited as a classic of post-colonial African literature. It is a strangely beautiful book, despite the ugliness of its story.
The narrative follows an unnamed man as he refuses to accept a bribe at work. The reader is given the impression that bribery is a way of life, and the man is laughed at and berated by his friends and family for dooming himself to poverty because of his 'perverse' morality. The man has two principle friends: Koomson, a schoolfriend turned corrupt politician, and The Teacher, a previous source of spiritual guidance who has grown tired of his own disappointment. These two provide the foils for the man as he wrestles with his own decisions in life and his hopes for show more the future of Ghana. The book finishes with the country in the midst of a military coup, which threatens to turn the old moralities on their heads.
Although the book is only short, there is a slow wistfulness about it, with short bursts of narrative interspersed with long, thoughtful chapters examining the man's thoughts and their place in contemporary (1960s) Ghanaian society. The simple act of being offered a bribe is enough plot to drive the book for almost its entire length, until the build up to the coup. It is a very thoughtful meditation on the foundations of Ayi Kwei Armah's home country, and rightly deserves it reputation as a classic of African literature. show less
The narrative follows an unnamed man as he refuses to accept a bribe at work. The reader is given the impression that bribery is a way of life, and the man is laughed at and berated by his friends and family for dooming himself to poverty because of his 'perverse' morality. The man has two principle friends: Koomson, a schoolfriend turned corrupt politician, and The Teacher, a previous source of spiritual guidance who has grown tired of his own disappointment. These two provide the foils for the man as he wrestles with his own decisions in life and his hopes for show more the future of Ghana. The book finishes with the country in the midst of a military coup, which threatens to turn the old moralities on their heads.
Although the book is only short, there is a slow wistfulness about it, with short bursts of narrative interspersed with long, thoughtful chapters examining the man's thoughts and their place in contemporary (1960s) Ghanaian society. The simple act of being offered a bribe is enough plot to drive the book for almost its entire length, until the build up to the coup. It is a very thoughtful meditation on the foundations of Ayi Kwei Armah's home country, and rightly deserves it reputation as a classic of African literature. show less
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Author Information
14+ Works 973 Members
Ayi Kwei Armah was born in Takoradi, Ghana, in 1939. He was educated at the elite Achimota College, near Accra, and received a degree in sociology from Harvard University in 1963. Upon leaving Harvard he become actively involved in the struggle for African liberation of Algeria, which had just emerged from its armed struggle for independence from show more France. In Algeria, Armah worked as a translator for the magazine Revolution Africaine until his health failed toward the end of 1963. After a five-month hospitalization in Boston, Massachusetts, he returned to Ghana in 1964. Armah's first novel, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), deals with political corruption in a newly independent African nation. The capital of this nation resembles Accra, the capital of his native Ghana. The novel is generally felt to be about the last years of Nkrumah's government. In Fragments (1970), his largely autobiographical second novel, Armah illustrates the difficulties of an intellectual in a culture oriented toward material possessions. His third novel, Why Are We So Blest? (1972), is considered largely an attempt to probe the complex relation of colonizer and colonized-between the European and the African. His most ambitious novel published so far is his fourth, Two Thousand Seasons (1973). Armah has lived and traveled in various parts of Africa, beginning in 1970. He has taught at several universities in Africa and the United States. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Has as a student's study guide
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
- Original publication date
- 1968
- Important places
- Africa; Ghana
- Dedication
- For Mrs. Dickson and Gwen.
- First words
- The light from the bus moved uncertainly down the road until finally the two vague circles caught some indistinct object on the side of the road where it curved out in front. The bus had come to a stop. Its confused rattle ha... (show all)d given place to an endless spastic shudder, as if its pieces were held together by too much rust ever to fall completely apart.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)This aching emptiness would be all that the remainder of his own life could offer him.
He walked very slowly, going home.
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- Members
- 588
- Popularity
- 49,934
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.84)
- Languages
- 6 — Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, Swahili, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 9
