Ghana Must Go

This sparkling debut from Taiye Selasi is sure to be one of the year's best. It is an audacious and ambitious novel that centres on the family of Kwaku, a proud doctor who has built and abandoned a family with his estranged wife Fola. As the book opens, he dies and the prose butterflies out from his death backwards to how he got there, sideways to his children living their lives and to years from now when reparations must be made, forgiveness must be had and closure must be achieved. The book, like The Corrections, deals with the oppressiveness of history and the weight of family, with how the actions of the parents create time loops and spirals within their offspring and how the directionless are united in their aimlessness. It's a beautiful book with one central tragic theme: that above all, family is everything and everywhere.

The book is beautifully put together too. The prose is rhythmic in its descriptions, its triples of prosaic scene-setting, its confident ability to tell multiple histories in multiple timelines simultaneously. Selasi is poised and control in her command of her characters and no matter how much we learn or unlearn about each one, she ensures we feel a warmth towards them. This is one of the year's best debuts and an accomplished masterstroke from the future voice of a generation.