The central story in this book tells of an upright man resisting the temptations of easy bribes and easy satisfactions and winning for his honesty nothing but scorn.

The beautyful ones are not yet born: A novel

Ayi Kwei Armah

Collier Books

Osiris Rising, A Novel

Per Ankh

The text takes preschool children, parents and teachers on a journey to the African origins of writing in ancient Egypt. (written in English and French). Written by Ayi Kwei Armah & Aboubacry Mousa Lam

Hieroglyphics for Babies

A member of the African elite groping its way out of the background of slavery and colonialism, Baako see his education as reparation for the lifework of a socially innovative artist. His family, more pragmatic, expects an elite resume to convert into power and wealth in the real world here and now. Unable to harmonize countervailing needs with wider social aspirations, both family and individual drift toward confrontation and inexorable loss.

Fragments

A railway freight clerk in Ghana attempts to hold out against the pressures that impel him toward corruption in both his family and his country. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the novel that catapulted Ayi Kwei Armah into the limelight. The novel is generally a satirical attack on the Ghanaian society during Kwame Nkrumah’s regime and the period immediately after independence in the 1960s. It is often claimed to rank with "Things Fall Apart" as one of the high points of post-olonial African Literature. A quote from Chapter 6: "And where is my solid ground these days? Let us say just that the cycle from birth to decay has been short. Short, brief. But otherwise not at all unusual. And even in the decline into the end there are things that remind the longing mind of old beginnings and hold out the promise of new ones, things even like your despair itself. I have heard this pain before, only then it was multiplied many, many times, but that may only be because at that time I was not so alone, so far apart. Maybe there are other lonely voices despairing now. I will not be entranced by the voice, even if it should swell as it did in the days of hope. I will not be entranced, since I have seen the destruction of the promises it made. But I shall not resist it either. I will be like a cork. It is so surprising, is it not, how even the worst happenings of the past acquire a sweetness in the memory. Old harsh distresses are now merely pictures and tastes which hurt no more, like itching scars which can only give pleasure now. Strange, because when I can think soberly about it all, with out pushing any later joys into the deepr past, I can remember that things were terrible then. When the war was over the soldiers came back to homes broken in their absence and they themselves brought murder in their hearts and gave it to those nearest them. I saw it, not very clearly, because I had no way of understanding it, but it frightened me. We had gone on marches of victory and I do not think there was anyone mean enough in spirit to ask whether we knew what we were celebrating. Whose victory? Ours? It did not matter. We marched, and only a dishonest fool will look back on his boyhood and say he knew even then that there was no meaning in any of it. It is so funny now, to remember that we all thought we were welcoming victory. Or perhaps there is nothing funny here at all, and it is only that victory itself happens to be the identical twin of defeat. "

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Per Ankh, the african publishing cooperative

1885, Berlin: European and American globalizers set up colonies that impoverished Africans by exporting raw resources to fuel European and American prosperity.1960s: "Independent" Africa's rulers, far from uniting Africa to create prosperity by processing the continent's fabulous resources, opted to maintain the colonial system in return for loans and grants, while chanting Pan-Africanism at hotel conferences.In this destructive drift, a minority of lucid scholars, spearheaded by Cheikh Anta Diop and Théophile Obenga, argued that instead of following Europe and America, we'd do better to retrieve Africa's own multi-millennial heritage of philosophical and cultural values, the best of which, like Maât, centered on political unity and social justice, would be our surest guide into a regenerative future. These essays show exactly why. They also suggest ways in which we can heed the call of our most creative thinkers, to prepare for the long-postponed rebirth of African society.

Remembering the Dismembered Continent

The Story of Sanhat, an Official of Kemet SANHAT, among Africa's oldest written literary texts, comes from the time of King Sehotepibre, three thousand eight hundred years ago. Sanhat, an officer returning from Libya after a military expedition, hears messengers summon the prince Senwosret urgently to the capital: The pharaoh is dead. Sanhat overhears other messengers summoning other, younger princes back. Fearing a bloody palace coup, he flees to Palestine. There he prospers. But dreading the prospect of dying abroad, he obtains a royal pardon, and returns to Egypt, bringing his life to a satisfactory close. This tale, over four thousand years old, is here transliterated and translated into French and English by the SHEMSW BAK hieroglyphic study group (Yopreka Somet, Jacques Depelchin, Ayi Kwei Armah) and then translated into Akan, Kikongo, Kiswahili, Portuguese, Wolof and Zulu by freelancers working from the French and English versions.

Sanhat

History

Jacques Depelchin

Yoporeka Somet

J Yedu Bannerman

Ernest Wamba dia Wamba

Ramenga Mtaali Osotsi

Simone Santos

Mustafaa Joob

Gugulethu Mazibuko

Africa

Per Ankh Publishers

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Books by Ayi Kwei Armah