Search Sweet Country

(Paperback)

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Description

A startling, densely poetic portrait of 1970s Ghana as it emerges from colonial rule Winner of the Valco Fund Literary Award for Fiction and the Ghana Book Award Search Sweet Country follows the lives of an eclectic, interconnected group of Ghanaians living in and around the sprawling, chaotic city of Accra in the mid-1970s. Bringing the city to life in dizzying, lyrical prose, Laing weaves a story filled with bizarre and often melancholy characters- an idealistic professor, a lovely young witch, a wide-eyed student, a corrupt politician and his hack sidekick, a business-savvy young woman, a healer, a bishop and a crazy man intent on founding his own village. Their collective narratives create a portrait of a country where colonialism is dying, but democracy remains elusive. Search Sweet Country is a timeless, near-forgotten gem by a virtuosic writer, as necessary now as when the book was first published. Like Joyce's Dublin and Dickens's London, Laing's Accra brims with both lush specificity and universal relevance.

Reviews

Surreal and satirical ... Laing has found an original voice that is all the stronger for making few concessions to the Western reader: wild, sophisticated, sorrowful * New York Times *
Gleefully energetic ... there is an extravagant hopefulness in Kojo Laing * London Review of Books *
Laing pushed the English language to its limits and beyond, by fusing Oxbridge English with West African Pidgin, elements from African languages and his own coinings, aiming at creating one gigantic, living and truly cosmopolitan language ... A treasure trove of imagery and refelctions which are just as amusing, relevant and thought-provoking as when they were written * The Voice *
Kojo Laing is one of the unsung heroes of African fiction. His prose is poetic, densely packed with strange juxtapositions and more ideas on one page than most writers use for several books. Search Sweet Country is an amazing achievement * Johannesburg Review of Books *
Reading Search Sweet Country is like reading a dream ... Each page delivers an intense blast of vivid imagery, a world in which landscapes come to life when inanimate objects receive human characterization ... Laing is a master stylist, and Search Sweet Country delivers an absorbing, if demanding, world for both its characters and the reader -- Uzodinma Iweala * Slate Magazine *
An intricate, beautifully rambling novel ... a compelling and rewarding read * Publishers Weekly *
Search Sweet Country can be read over and over, continually surprising with a fresh turn of phrase or nuance in character, always engaging, always beautiful. The search is worthwhile * Pittsburgh Gazette *
Exuberantly reels with language and imagery reminiscent of the early Joyce * Library Journal *
A figurative, comic treat, filled with wild characters and dizzy, wink-filled prose * FlavorWire *
African literature's greatest linguistic innovator * Brittle Paper Magazine *

Author Bio

Kojo Laing was born on the Gold Coast, Ghana, in 1946, studied in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1960s, before returning to Accra, where he would spend the rest of his life as a novelist, poet and educator. A writer of soaring originality and pioneer of Afrofuturism, his Search Sweet Country (1986) won numerous awards, vast critical acclaim, and has been praised as 'the finest novel written in English ever to come out of the African continent' (Binyavanga Wainaina).