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by Nana Oforiatta Ayim
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.
"A beautifully told story of family secrets and conflicting cultural expectations." ―Booklist (starred review)
"A compelling and ambitious novel ... Through Maya's disjointed experiences of wandering-searching-leaving-returning, Ayim adroitly navigates the lasting consequences of family dysfunction, immigration, colonial legacy, and political upheaval. Part parable, part history, part warning, The God Child is a resonating, intimate drama of family gone awry across a shrinking global stage." ―Shelf Awareness
"This is a story that is obsessed with stories ... I sometimes had the sense that there was another narrative running just beneath the surface of the text ... At times this feeling was thrilling, and at others maddening. Yet isn't this precisely the experience of migration, of trying to situate yourself in contexts that weren't created for you? ... A story [like this one] will illuminate Ghana's history ... will coax something whole from the broken parts." ―New York Times Book Review
This information about The God Child was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a Ghanaian writer, art historian and filmmaker. She is founder of the ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge, through which she has pioneered a pan-African Cultural Encyclopaedia. Recently appointed a TORCH Global South Visiting Fellow to Oxford University, she is also the recipient of the 2015 Art & Technology Award from LACMA; of the 2016 AIR Award; and of the inaugural 2018 Soros Arts Fellowship. She is a contributor to the 2019 New Daughters of Africa anthology and in February 2019 delivered a TED Talk. Ayim will curate the Ghana's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. The God Child is her first novel. She lives in Ghana.
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