Imprint: Penguin Classics
Published: 01/08/2019
ISBN: 9780241370094
Length: 368 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm
Weight: 269g
RRP: £10.99
Accra, Ghana, the 1970s. In the streets, marketplaces and crowded houses of this sprawling city, an unforgettable cast of characters live, love and try to get by: an idealistic professor, a beautiful young witch, a wide-eyed student, a corrupt politician, a healer and a man intent on founding his own village. Through their stories, and those of the living, breathing city itself, Kojo Laing's dazzling novel creates a portrait of a place caught between colonialism and freedom, eternity and the present.
'The finest novel written in English ever to come out of the African continent' Binyavanga Wainaina
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Published: 01/08/2019
ISBN: 9780241370094
Length: 368 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm
Weight: 269g
RRP: £10.99
Surreal and satirical ... Laing has found an original voice that is all the stronger for making few concessions to the Western reader: wild, sophisticated, sorrowful
Gleefully energetic ... there is an extravagant hopefulness in Kojo Laing
Laing pushed the English language to its limits and beyond, by fusing Oxbridge English with West African Pidgin, elements from African languages and his own coinings, aiming at creating one gigantic, living and truly cosmopolitan language ... A treasure trove of imagery and refelctions which are just as amusing, relevant and thought-provoking as when they were written
Kojo Laing is one of the unsung heroes of African fiction. His prose is poetic, densely packed with strange juxtapositions and more ideas on one page than most writers use for several books. Search Sweet Country is an amazing achievement
Reading Search Sweet Country is like reading a dream ... Each page delivers an intense blast of vivid imagery, a world in which landscapes come to life when inanimate objects receive human characterization ... Laing is a master stylist, and Search Sweet Country delivers an absorbing, if demanding, world for both its characters and the reader
An intricate, beautifully rambling novel ... a compelling and rewarding read
Search Sweet Country can be read over and over, continually surprising with a fresh turn of phrase or nuance in character, always engaging, always beautiful. The search is worthwhile
Exuberantly reels with language and imagery reminiscent of the early Joyce
A figurative, comic treat, filled with wild characters and dizzy, wink-filled prose
African literature's greatest linguistic innovator