Ayi Kwei Armah

Published in 1968, Ayi Kwei Armah's debut, The Beautyful Ones, with its title deliberately misspelt, follows a nameless railway clerk who refuses bribes in a corrupt post-independence Ghana. It became one of the defining African novels of its time.

Education

He was born in Sekondi-Takoradi on 28 October 1939 to Fante-speaking parents, with royal Ga ancestry on his father's side. He went to Achimota School (then Prince of Wales College) from 1953 to 1958, then won a scholarship to the United States, attending Groton School and Harvard, where he studied sociology. He later earned an MFA in creative writing at Columbia (1968-70).

Career

He translated for the magazine Revolution Africaine in Algeria, wrote scripts for Ghana Television, taught English at Navrongo Secondary School and edited Jeune Afrique in Paris in 1967-68. In the 1970s he taught in Tanzania and Lesotho, and later at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Cornell and Wisconsin-Madison. Fragments came out in 1970, followed by Two Thousand Seasons in 1973 and The Healers five years later. He has lived in Senegal since the 1980s and runs his own publishing house, Per Ankh, at Popenguine near Dakar.