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    Ghana Must Go
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    Ghana Must Go
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    Ghana Must Go
    Audiobook12 hours

    Ghana Must Go

    Written by Taiye Selasi

    Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Introducing a powerful new novelist whose evocation of an unforgettable African family is testament to the transformative power of unconditional love

    Kwaku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside the home he shares in Ghana with his second wife. The news of Kwaku's death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Ghana Must Go is their story.

    Electric, exhilarating, beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go follows the Sais' journey, moving with great elegance through time and place to share the truths hidden and lies told; the crimes committed in the name of love. In the wake of Kwaku's death, the family gathers in Ghana, at their mother, Fola's, new home. The eldest son and his new wife; the mysterious, beautiful twins; their baby sister, now a young woman-all come together for the first time in years, each carrying secrets of his own. What is revealed in their coming together is the story of how they came apart.

    But the horrible fragility of the world they have built soon becomes clear, and Kwaku's leaving begets a series of betrayals that none of them could have imagined. Splintered, alone, each navigates his pain, believing that what has been lost can never be recovered-until, in Ghana, a new way forward, a new family, begins to emerge.

    Ghana Must Go     is at once a portrait of a family and an exploration of the importance of where we come from and our obligations to one another. In a sweeping narrative that takes us from West Africa to New England to London, Ghana Must Go teaches that the stories we share with one another can build a new future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 5, 2013
    ISBN9781101605141
    Unavailable
    Ghana Must Go

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    Reviews for Ghana Must Go

    4/5

    168 ratings18 reviews

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    • 5/5
      she read so beautifully. loved every bit of it ~
    • 5/5
      Don't read anything about this book. Just read it.
    • 4/5
      Great characters and fine story somewhat marred by Selasi's penchant for "prose-poetry" writing style.
    • 5/5
      Ghana Must Go is an unusual read. Taiye Selasi tells the complicated story of a family from the perspective of each of the members. Beginning with the father, Kweku Sai, a brilliant surgeon who left Ghana to train in Johns Hopkins and Harvard. We learn about Kweku's life as an impoverished student in Africa, as a displaced, brilliant, and hardworking student and doctor, as a devoted husband and adoring father, and as a gifted doctor in one of the top hospitals in the world. When Kweku's brilliant career is somehow implodes through no fault of his own, he is devastated devastated by the change and the damage impacts his family deeply. As Taiye Selasi introduces Fola, the wife and mother, and the children (Olu, the eldest and surgeon, the gifted and beautiful twins Taiwo and Kehinde, and Sadie, the baby of the family) we discover more about the family, about each person's struggle for acceptance and love, and about the worlds that they inhabit in Brookline, in New York, in New Haven, and in Africa.There is Fola, a legendary beauty whose mother died in childbirth and whose father was tragically murdered during a violent attack when she was still a young girl. Fola escapes to Ghana and then to the West to study. When she meets Kweku in the US, she has locked her story deep inside. Her eldest child, Olu, has followed in his father's footsteps and has established himself as a brilliant surgeon. Olu has not remained unscathed by the troubles in his life despite the fact that he appears to lead a "charmed life" and learning more about Olu makes him complicated and deeply sympathetic. Olu's twin siblings have inherited the strikingly gorgeous looks of his mother's family. For as long as anyone can remember, the twins have drawn people to them with their unusual looks and their independence - they seem to live in a world of their own. Kehinde doesn't have the tension, the drive, that characterizes Olu's life but Kehinde has become a world renowned artist. Taiwo is brilliant and gorgeous, but her gifts and successes haven't brought her the contentment that we'd expect but Taiwo carries a dark secret that explains her isolation. Sadie, the cherished youngest child, has had it much easier than her siblings but still longs for a life like those of their wealthy Brookline neighbors and her WASP best friend - it takes a life changing trip to bring the family back together.Ghana Must Go is an amazing read. It's a story about Africa, about immigration, about building a life and the sacrifices and joys that this entails.ISBN-10: 1594204497 - Hardcover $25.95Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (March 5, 2013), 336 pages.Review copy courtesy of the publisher and the Amazon Vine Reviewers program.
    • 5/5
      I see very mixed reactions to the writing style and pace of this novel, but I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I loved how the backstory unfolded through different characters' memories. The writing was very poetic, very easy to get swallowed up in. Yes, there were some unlikable people, but I felt a lot of sympathy and understanding for several others. Fola was my favorite, but Kweku also touched my heart (I think I was supposed to dislike him, but I couldn't). I am so glad that I picked this one up.
    • 4/5
      New from The Penguin Press this month, Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go is a semi-exotic and lyrical examination of a family that came apart at the seams long ago. The parents separated, the children scattered and only now, as the patriarch dies, can the family find a way to become whole again.As the book moves forward, the story of this complicated African-American family pieces itself together, almost like an unraveled sweater weaving itself back into shape. The perspective switches from person to person with each chapter, and the story is often told in a series of flashbacks that relate to and explain the present. Jessica Maria Tuccelli was successful with this particular narrative form in last year's Glow (and Barbara Hamby even more so in Lester Higata's 20th Century) but Selasi is somewhat less so.The alternating of past and present is sometimes less than smooth and often a little confusing. And while her choice to tell the story from a variety of perspectives is an excellent way to reveal the fractured past, all of the characters seem to be of one voice - the author's. There is no coloring of the glass, as it were, no refocusing of the voice with the change of perspective.That all said, the same story told from beginning to end in third-person omniscient would be frustratingly boring, so I can't fault Selasi for trying. Her prose is beautiful and her phrasing poetic. Frankly, Selasi's talents might be better-suited for poetry and verse than for novel-writing.
    • 3/5
      This book left me feeling conflicted - it had a strong plot: stronger than most novels. Not a story I could have left unresolved. But the style of the writing which might be termed experimental, made it hard to enjoy. In particular there was a tendency to refer to events not yet explained, and to leave it several chapters before going into that explanation, leaving me utterly confused. And it thumbed its nose at conventional notions of grammar - many a time I would find myself re-reading a sentence, trying to get it to make some sense in my head, before giving up and accepting that it was meant to be that way. Some of it I ended up speed-reading. Yet the tragedy at the heart of this novel was so well depicted and inspired such sympathy and outrage that there was never a possibility of my leaving the book unfinished.
    • 4/5
      These characters' heritage lingers in the background until brought to the forefront when the family comes together in the final act. However, Ghana Must Go never feels like 'an African novel'. More than a simple immigrant experience, more than a depiction of struggle and success, the novel explores the most relatable of all themes: family.

      This reader with four older siblings found the complicated inter-relationship between Kweku's four children particularly well-crafted. Selasi's prose floats from the page as effortlessly as the shifts in time period and character's point of view. At times the novel is an elaborate piece of poetry. Fractured sentences and run-on thoughts comfortably nestle within the same paragraph.

      A very mature work by a debut novelist, fully deserving of all the praise it will undoubtedly receive in awards season.

      (Review of ARC provided by Penguin Books via a First Reads giveaway)
    • 5/5
      The Sai's seemed to have beat the odds. Kweku and Fola are immigrants, from Ghana and Nigeria respectively, that have made a good life for themselves in the states. Kweku is a remarkable surgeon. Their children are proving to be studious and creative. When pride removes the cornerstone the foundation of this family is suddenly ruined.Taiye Selasi wrote a breathtakingly beautiful story about a family where the pillars, Kweku and Fola, were damaged from the beginning. Kweku appeared to be a pillar of strength but in the end Fola actually proved to be, whereas, Kweku gave way to a slow inner rotting.There is so much to appreciate about Ghana Must Go but the Sai twins, Kehinde and Taiwo, possessed a certain mystery that kept me reading. They were good at keeping secrets. Their biggest secret almost destroyed them both. Olu the eldest of the Sai children was the most boring. Sadie, the baby, was borderline annoying and the least developed of all the characters.To be honest, this book was better than I could have ever imagined. There was a certain calmness to all the tragedy it possessed. Selasi's writing was deliberate and lyrical. I try not to compare authors but Selasi's style in Ghana Must Go reminds me of Alice Walker.
    • 4/5
      I was surprised that my Around the World for a Good Book selection for Ghana turns out to have a good portion of the narrative set close to home in the Boston, Massachusetts area.  Selasi's novel is a story of immigration, family, the long term ramifications of choices made, and an attempt to peer beyond the stereotypes of Africa and Africans. The novel is set around the family of Kweku Sai, long isolated from one another, coming together in Ghana for his funeral.  Kweku immigrated to America where he became a celebrated surgeon, but after being unjustly fired, the great shame causes him to leave his family and return to Ghana.  His wife Fola was a law student who gave up her career to support Kweku, and faces difficult choices when forced to raise 4 children on her own.  The eldest son Olu follows his father into medicine, but his father's abandonment leaves him fearful of commitment.  The sister-brother twins Taiwo and Kehinde bear the scars of being sent to live with Fola's brother in Nigeria after Kweku's departure and the sexual abuse they suffered there. The youngest child Sadie didn't know her father at all and until shortly before the main narrative begins had been very close with her mother.  All of their stories are told in extended flashbacks intertwined with the present day story. This is a heartbreaking and harrowing novel and should come with a big trigger warning.  It unfortunately tends toward the melodramatic although there is honesty in the family dynamics portrayed.  Thankfully, this is also a story of redemption and healing, although it is still hard to not feel unsettled after reading.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of a family whose patriarch, a renowned surgeon originally from Ghana, has left his Nigerian wife and American born children in the U.S. and returned to his native country many years before the story begins. When, at the opening of the novel, he suffers a fatal heart attack, his death precipitates not only a return of his wife and children to Ghana, but the exhumation of dark family secrets. The trip to Ghana reveals the struggles, pain and joy of growing up with a "foot in both places." While the family's experience is vividly portrayed in all its particular strength and misery, it also reveals tensions common to many immigrant families. Strong clear writing and compelling characters.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      “Sixteen years on he stands bent at the waist with his hands on his knees, his bare feet in the grass, partly wheezing, partly laughing at what's happened and how: the heartbreak he fled from has found him.At last.”This story of the Sai family isn't an easy-to-breeze-through summer read. Its odd writing style, its jumps in time and place, challenge the reader. Some sentences need much interpretation. Some of it is fairly straightforward, but don't count on too much of that. The reader is required to work for the story.The story itself is like many family sagas: there are secrets, children deny their pasts yet come to echo them, grievous mistakes are made, and miscommunication is rampant. There was one part toward the end, that I could see coming, although not the exact details, and I hated that bit. Too painful to read. The characters, flawed in their own ways, were for the most part very likeable. (There a couple of BIG exceptions to that, they become obvious.)This book won't appeal to everyone, but for those who like reading about family and are willing to work at understanding, this one is touching and satisfying.I was given an advance reader's copy of the book for review, and the quotation may be changed in the published edition.
    • 4/5
      Ghana Must Go contains some of what you’d expect in leafing through it in a bookstore, revealing the cultures in Nigeria and Ghana, the hardships in growing up there, and the difficulties of coming to America from there. It tells of all these things, but never in an “oh boo hoo” way, and at the same time, the book transcends the specifics, as all great books do. It’s about a family that’s fallen apart, of love lost, regret, and the effect it had on four children, each uniquely talented, and each uniquely damaged. And forgetting their ancestry, regardless of that, the descriptions of the family dynamic and the perspectives of each member felt spot-on and insightful, true to any family. I won’t spoil the story, but for the framework, a doctor collapses, dead at the age of 57. He had left his wife and four kids fifteen or sixteen years earlier, when they ranged in age from eighteen to four. The family’s history and what happened from that point is then revealed in a non-linear way in snippets. Selasi’s writing style is at once both reserved and like cool spring water flowing downhill, running and dancing as it goes, and it’s an impressive first book.Quotes:On how events in Africa are viewed, this had my skin tingling:“She sensed the change immediately, in the tone people took when they learned that her father had been murdered by soldiers; in the way that they’d nod as if, yes, all makes sense, the beginning of the Nigerian civil war, but of course. Never mind that the Hausas were targeting Igbos, and her father was a Yoruba, and her grandmother Scottish, and the house staff Fulani, some Indian even. Ten dead, one an Igbo, minor details, no matter. … it didn’t matter, [they] somehow believed that it was natural, however tragic, what had happened. That she’d stopped being Folasade Somayina Savage and had become the native of a generic War-Torn Nation. Without specifics. … Just some war-torn nation, hopeless and inhuman and as humid as a war-torn nation anywhere, all war-torn nations everywhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ they’d say, nodding yes in agreement, as one says I’m sorry when the elderly die, ‘that’s too bad’ (but not that bad, more ‘how these things go’ in this world), in their eyes not a hint of a surprise. Surely, broad-shouldered, woolly-haired fathers of natives of hot war-torn countries got killed all the time?”On being damaged, this one gave me goosebumps:“And what happens to daughters whose mothers betray them? They don’t become huggable like Sadie, Taiwo thinks. They don’t become giggly, adorable like Ling. They grow shells. Become hardened. They stop being girls. Though they look like girls and act like girls and flirt like girls and kiss like girls – really, they’re generals, commandos at war, riding out at first light to preempt further strikes. With an army behind them, their talents their horsemen, their brilliance and beauty and anything else they may have at their disposal dispatched into battle to capture the castle, to bring back the Honor. Of course it doesn’t work. For they burn down the village in search of the safety they lost, every time, Taiwo knows. They end lonely. Desired and admired and alone in their tents, where they weep through the night. In the morning they ride, and the boys see them coming. And think: my, what brilliant and beautiful girls. Hearts broken, blood spilled. Riding on, seeking vengeance. This a most curious twist in the plot: that the vengeance they seek is the love of another, a mother-like lover who will not betray. At the thought she laughs harder. To think of her lover, his scarf and his sweatpants, his motherly smile. And his wife and his children. Prepackaged betrayal. A foregone conclusion.”On dreamers:“They were doers and thinkers and lovers and seekers and givers, but dreamers, most dangerously of all.They were dreamer-women.Very dangerous women.Who looked at the world through their wide dreamer-eyes and saw it not as it was, ‘brutal, senseless,’ etc., but worse, as it might be or might yet become.So, insatiable women.Un-pleasable women.Who wanted above all things what could not be had. Not what they could not have – no such thing for such women – but what wasn’t there to be had in the first place. And worst: who looked at him and saw what he might yet become. More beautiful than he believes he could possibly be.”On making love:“His chest was still heaving against her, an hour, two hours. Moving slowly, and deeply, a dive. Downward and downward, until she was aching. ‘Enough,’ she said softly. He came, then he wept.This was a man, she had felt, one could live with, build a life with, whatever “a life” might yet mean: who gave all to the living, with deep trembling breathing, his life to protecting the living from death. Though he knew it was futile. The way he made love, as if now were forever, gone deaf to the rest, as if breathing were music and hovels were ballrooms and all that they needed to do was to dance. It was this that convinced her despite his low wages for nearly two decades and everything else, that her husband made love like a man who loved life. That he put up a fight where she conceded defeat.”On stoicism:“So if ever the odd memory returned to him, caught up to him, billowing forward from behind him like tumbleweed in wind, he would feel only distance, the uncoverable distance, deeply comforting distance, and with it a calm. A calm understanding of how loss worked in the world, of what happened to whom, in what quantities. Never hurt. He didn’t add it all up – loss of sister, later mother, absent father, scourge of colonialism, birth into poverty and all that – and lament that he’d had a sad life, an unfair one, shake his fists at the heavens, asking why. Never rage. He very simply considered it, where he came from, what he’d come through, who he was, and concluded that it was forgettable, all. He had no need for remembering, as if the details were remarkable, as if anyone would forget it all happened if he did. It would happen to someone else, a million and one someone elses: the same senseless losses, the same tearless hurts.”On suffering, perhaps the opposite of the above:“She whispers this passionately, with no trace of sympathy, overcome by the possessiveness one feels for one’s suffering, the aggressive insistence on the suffering’s uniqueness, in nature and depth and endurance over time.”
    • 4/5
      Is this another tortured tale about the disintegration of a family or is it more? The fact that I'm still thinking about it 24 hours after the last page was turned instead of jumping right into my next book, leads me to the second conclusion. I almost abandoned it in the first 75 pages while Kweku Sai lies dying in his garden of a heart attack. The author's confusing hodgepodge of words captures Kweku's disoriented state of mind and the dismay of the family he left behind many years ago, but it was exhausting work untangling the jumble of thoughts and feelings she conveys. However, I'm glad I stuck with it to see the picture of a man who left Ghana to become a successful doctor in America develop into a story of love that withstands shame and sorrow.Reading this book takes concentration and patience. The story not only jumps from Africa to the immigrant experience in America and then back to Africa, but it is written in a poetic style that is sometimes difficult to follow. It is most definitely a literary novel. But don't let that scare you! The second half of the book shines as the fractured family comes together to remember their patriarch. Long held secrets are revealed and wounds begin to heal when they travel to Ghana, the homeland that Kweku's four children never knew, and rediscover the connection to their past and to each other.
    • 3/5
      Perhaps this debut novel was a bit over-hyped, and my expectations were therefore too high?Ghana must go deals with an African family in the USA. The father has escaped poverty in Ghana and becomes a well qualified doctor in the US, marries an intelligent an beautiful Nigerian girl, and becomes the father of four talented children. However, nothing is good enough, and in the continuous process of proving themselves worthy failure is not permitted, and weaknesses are not talked about. So what can the father do when "failure" (perhaps it was just bad luck?) comes on his way but run away and hide? The family falls apart and each member of the family in his/her own way becomes miserable. It is only at the death of the father that the family gets together again, and finds solace in each other arms. What is special about this book is the style of writing. It is very sketchy, using short sentences to sketch an atmosphere. Atmosphere is more important than words in this family that is not a family of words anyway, rather a family of suppressed emotions. So the style is special, and I must say that I enjoyed it in the first part of the book, which was, in my opinion, by far the best part of the book. However, after a while I started to get bored with the style. Perhaps this was caused by the fact that I got fed up with the story and the characters as well. So melodramatic! The characters were not convincing to me and neither was the story. Whereas I was quite drawn in to the story and its imagery in the first part, it was as if i was thrown out from the second part onward and could just be a skeptical outsider to some silly melodrama, just wishing for it to end.
    • 3/5
      One of many, many books about troubled families but this one has little extra to offer outside of a lot of it takes place in Africa. The story centers around the death of the "patriarch" of the family and the assembly of the family at his death. The other reviewers speak of the great imagery but I felt the author was trying way too hard to be "artsy" at the expense of substance. Lots of one and two word sentences for effect I would guess. My times she is vague about either who is speaking or whose thoughts we are delving into and I had to reread many passages. I am not a dunce here (two Master's Degrees). The other factor is in my opinion none of the characters were particularly engaging -so I really didn't care a lot about what happened to them.
    • 4/5
      Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi is an extraordinary work of literary fiction. Selasi's use of imagery and flowing language made the book come alive for me. I truly enjoyed how well the tale of one family could be so complex and yet beautifully interwoven to create an unforgettable book. I highly recommend Ghana Must Go to readers, but most especially book discussion groups, this would make for an excellent pick.
    • 3/5
      I was fortunate to review this book early for Penguin's First Flights program. The book is due to be published in March, 2013. From the first few pages I was overwhelmed by the imagery of Kweku's quiet death in early morning in Africa. Taiye Selasi's description of a man in the thralls of a heart attack reliving his life in his garden were special. After Kweku's portion of the book I began to lose the thread a bit. Families are interesting, intense and complicated no matter what your ethnic background, economic level or age - they are a mess. This family is no different and once all the secrets are revealed it is easy to see the hurt and loss of their husband and father. Her imagery of Ghana is magical and she has a special gift for bringing the reader right there feeling the dew on the grass.