The main character is a nameless railway clerk, referred to as "the man" throughout, standing in for every poor labourer not eating out of the government's coffers. The effect isn't as jarring as it sounds, since politics seem to pervade every aspect of daily life, from the pressures of family members to take the only known route out of poverty, to speeches given by rising Ghanaian idealists who grow into fat politicians speaking in ridiculous fake-British accents. Sometimes it is understandable, the doomed attempt to purify the self by adding to the disease outside." The novel breaks out of the plot and swings into essay mode when discoursing on the topic of politics. Koomson's insides gave a growl longer than usual, an inner fart of personal, corrupt thunder which in its fullness sounded as if it had rolled down all the way from the eating throat thundering through the belly and the guts, to end in further silent pollution of the air already sick with flatulent fear." Or how about this half-hearted attempt to absolve those impelled toward corruption: "Sometimes it is understandable that people spit so much, when all around decaying things push inward and mix all the body's juices with the taste of rot. Witness the following description of a Party man, corrupt by definition: "His mouth had the rich stench of rotten menstrual blood.
I have no doubt that years from now, my enduring memories of this novel will be of the nauseating stench of garbage, the wet slime of fresh vomit, the numerous images of human excrement caked onto latrines and railings and faces.
In Ghana, the period in question is the 1960s.Īyi Kwei Armah has a particular fondness for scatological images that meshes well with his chosen message. Hope was abating, disillusionment with Independence was beginning to take hold, and people were resigning themselves to the sad realities of poverty and inequality. This shit-encrusted tale of corruption and despair belongs to a tradition of post-colonial African literature that is unflinchingly critical of national politics.
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