The hero is openly despised for his uncompromising stance against corruption. Sometimes, he is bogged down in self-pity, as he wonders at his pathetic condition and berates himself for being a mediocre. As he weighs her words, he develops low self-esteem and occasionally seeks succour from Teacher, the only man that seems to understand him. That is, a bird that feeds on maggots, but hates the excreta, which produces the worms. The uncelebrated hero lives like a stranger in his own home where even his good natured wife, described as, ‘ a very polite woman…’(p.55) makes him ‘feel like a criminal …’ for failing to do what everyone else does in order to get enough money for their upkeep (P.54). He faces intense pressures to compromise his self-entrenched value system. He is portrayed as a lone ranger in his stance against corruption. The protagonist is an unnamed railway freight clerk.
His published novels which includes: Fragments, Why are we so Blessed,Two Thousand Seasons, The Healers and The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. He has worked as translator, editor, television script-writer and lecturer at the National University of Lesotho. He is a railway freight clerk that attempts to hold out against the pressures that impel him toward corruption in both his family and his country.Īyei Kwei Armah was born in Takoradi, Ghana, in 1939 and was educated at Achimota High School, Groton School and Harvard University. The novel tells the story of a nameless man who struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana. The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born was published in 1968 by Houghton Mifflin, and then republished in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series in 1969. It is often claimed to rank with “Things Fall Apart” as one of the high points of post-colonial African Literature. 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. The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the debut novel that is catapulted by the Ghanaian writer Ayei Kwei Armah into the limelight.
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