Armah, Ayi Kwei (Vol. 136) - S. Nyamfukudza （review date 7 March 1980）
S. Nyamfukudza （review date 7 March 1980）
SOURCE: “Drought & Rain” in New Statesman, Vol. 99, No. 2555, March 7, 1980, pp. 362-63.
[In the following review, Nyamfukudza discusses Armah's Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers.]
The first three novels by Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah, intricate in form and distinguished by a highly wrought prose style using violent imagery, were all vividly emphatic artifacts. With outspoken courage and unrelenting commitment, he grappled seriously with the waste, corruption and inefficiency resulting from the cultural confusion which is the post-colonial inheritance of Black Africa. Bereft of any sense of community or direction, the educated élites and the masses are shown as actively engaged in their own betrayal, collaborating in the neo-colonial plunder and impoverishment of their national heritages. His protagonists, anguished and fragile beings, are consumed in ineffectual quests for...
[The entire page is 862 words long]
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