Armah, Ayi Kwei (Vol. 5) | Armah, Ayi Kwei 1939–
Armah, Ayi Kwei 1939–
A Ghanaian educated in America and now living in the United States, Armah writes novels, poetry, and short stories. His first novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, was praised for its prose style and compared with work by Joyce.
Ayi Kwei Armah tends to regard himself as a novelist only incidentally African. On occasion Armah has gone to rather great pains to make it clear that he is writing literature first, and that the Africanness of his writing is something of less great importance. With few exceptions, Armah's two novels [The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Fragments]—and especially the second one—would seem to support this theory, for there are very few "Africanisms" in his work, and his protagonists become alienated men—lonely, isolated individuals confronting a thoroughly dehumanized society in which everyone else seems insane, although it is usually Armah's insular protagonists who,...
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