Taiye Selasi

This book is rich and deep, mesmerizing and spectacular. At times I felt it opened a portal onto something grand and profound about love and blood and the ties that bind. Read it and you will feel what great literature can do: you will feel you are more vividly alive

Ghana Must Go is both a fast moving story of one family's fortunes and an ecstatic exploration of the inner lives of its members. With her perfectly-pitched prose and flawless technique, Selasi does more than merely renew our sense of the African novel: she renews our sense of the novel, period. An astonishing debut

An eye for the perfect detail . . . an unforgettable voice on the page . . . miss out on Ghana Must Go and you will miss one of the best new novels of the season

Taiye Selasi is the woman the literary world is drooling over . . . [Ghana Must Go] is technically ambitious, poetically dense . . . an unpredictable family story of love, abandonment, aspiration and migration

Taiye Selasi writes with glittering poetic command, a sense of daring, and a deep emotional investment in the lives and transformations of her characters . . . a powerful portrait of a broken family

A most impressive first novel. . . She manages a generous coverage of time and space with adroit concision, along with a vibrant range of characters. The family is so convincing, with those telling problems of divided culture. Very much a novel of today

Taiye Selasi is a young writer of staggering gifts and extraordinary sensitivity. Ghana Must Go seems to contain the entire world, and I shall never forget it

With mesmerizing craftsmanship and massive imagination [Taiye Selasi] takes the reader on an unforgettable journey across continents and most importantly deeply into the lives of the people whom she writes about. She de-"exoticizes" whole populations and demographics and brings them firmly into the readers view as complicated and complex human beings. Ghana Must Go is a big novel, elemental, meditative, and mesmerizing

In Ghana Must Go, Selasi drives the six characters skillfully through past and present, unearthing old betrayals and unexplained grievances at a delicious pace. By the time the surviving five convene at a funeral in Ghana, we are invested in their reconciliation--which is both realistically shaky and dramatically satisfying ... Narrative gold

Selasi's ambition - to show her readers not "Africa" but one African family, authors of their own achievements and failures - is one that can be applauded no matter what accent you give the word

The first line of Taiye Selasi's buoyant first novel, Ghana Must Go, captures the book in miniature: "Kweku dies barefoot on a Sunday before sunrise, his slippers by the doorway to the bedroom like dogs." The springy dactylic meter of the prose (KWEku dies BAREfoot on a . . .), the sly internal rhymes (Sunday, sunrise, doorway), the surprising twist on a cliché (to die like a dog), the invigorating mixture of darkness and drollery are a big part of what makes this book such a joy... It's an auspicious how-do-you-do to the world, and nearly every page of the novel displays the same bounce and animation... rapturous.

Meet the Sais, a Nigerian-Ghanaian family living in the United States. A family prospering until the day father and surgeon Kweku Sai is victim of a grave injustice. Ashamed, he abandons his beautiful wife Fola and their little boys and girls, causing the family to fracture and spiral out into the world - New York, London, West Africa, New England - on uncertain, troubled journeys until, many years later, tragedy unites them. Now this broken family has a chance to heal - but can the Sais take it?

Taiye Selasi

Praise for Ghana Must Go

This book is rich and deep, mesmerizing and spectacular. At times I felt it opened a portal onto something grand and profound about love and blood and the ties that bind. Read it and you will feel what great literat ...

Ghana Must Go is both a fast moving story of one family's fortunes and an ecstatic exploration of the inner lives of its members. With her perfectly-pitched prose and flawless technique, Selasi does more than ...

An eye for the perfect detail . . . an unforgettable voice on the page . . . miss out on Ghana Must Go and you will miss one of the best new novels of the season

This book is rich and deep, mesmerizing and spectacular. At times I felt it opened a portal onto something grand and profound about love and blood and the ties that bind. Read it and you will feel what great literat ...

Ghana Must Go is both a fast moving story of one family's fortunes and an ecstatic exploration of the inner lives of its members. With her perfectly-pitched prose and flawless technique, Selasi does more than ...

An eye for the perfect detail . . . an unforgettable voice on the page . . . miss out on Ghana Must Go and you will miss one of the best new novels of the season

This book is rich and deep, mesmerizing and spectacular. At times I felt it opened a portal onto something grand and profound about love and blood and the ties that bind. Read it and you will feel what great literat ...

Ghana Must Go is both a fast moving story of one family's fortunes and an ecstatic exploration of the inner lives of its members. With her perfectly-pitched prose and flawless technique, Selasi does more than ...

An eye for the perfect detail . . . an unforgettable voice on the page . . . miss out on Ghana Must Go and you will miss one of the best new novels of the season

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter