- Home
- FICTION
- General & Literary Fiction
- The God Child
The God Child
- Delivery and returns info
-
Free CA delivery on orders $40 or over
You must sign in to add this item to your wishlist. Please sign in or create an account
Description
"A beautifully told story of family secrets and conflicting cultural expectations." --Booklist (starred review)
"A brave reinvention of the immigrant narrative . . . Cesaire's Notebook meets Duras' Lover. Unprecedented" --Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go
A moving, mesmerizing, and astoundingly original debut novel by one of the most exciting literary voices to emerge in recent years.
Maya is the only child of an expat Ghanaian couple based in Germany, where as the sole African girl in her school, the pressure is on her to succeed. While her father is taciturn and reserved, her mother-heir to a crumbling dynasty in Ghana-is glamorous and charismatic. Maya is both in awe of and intimidated by her overbearing beauty and her ability to command a room, especially with tales of the family's former glory that seem so far removed from Maya's reality. But when Maya's mother adopts her god child, Kojo, his mission to heal their story begins to bring to Maya the sense of possibility and purpose she has longed for.
The God Child is a coming-of-age story about a young girl finding her freedom in the midst of familial, cultural, and political constraints. With a bracing combination of power and vulnerability, Ayim's debut is about how families, and nations, overcome the limitations of the past through the cycles of generations.
Product details
| Published | Mar 03 2020 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 256 |
| ISBN | 9781408882429 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Dimensions | 216 x 135 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
-
Meditative, gestural, philosophic: a brave reinvention of the immigrant narrative, unapologetically inward-facing, seductively lyric ... Unprecedented
Taiye Selasi
-
'An intriguing debut … From gender politics to life as a young black immigrant in Europe, the central themes are invigorated through rich characterisation and detail … A lyrical prose style swoops the reader into its fold from the outset … Brightly detailed … Vibrant in its themes, prose and characterisation
Irish Times
-
A story that, like this one, will illuminate Ghana's history; a story that will coax something whole from the broken parts of their lives
New York Times Book Review
-
Pioneering and admirable … Ayim is adept at capturing the anxiety of a preteen whose desire to fit in is exacerbated by being black in a world where blackness and Africa are not valued … Books such as The God Child have the potential to enrich [world literature] and, in Berger's words, bring new ways of seeing
Guardian
-
A cultural juggernaut
Harper's Bazaar
-
Hugely readable … Dizzying … Intriguing and engrossing … A classic coming-of-age narrative … Deeply concerned with Ghanaian history and the psychic dislocations of exile
Daily Mail

























