Kofi Awoonor

Kofi Awoonor was a Ghanaian poet, novelist, scholar and diplomat whose writing joined the dirge poetry of his Ewe people with modern and religious imagery. He was Ghana's ambassador to Brazil and Cuba and its Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He was killed in the terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi on 21 September 2013.

Early life and education

He was born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams on 13 March 1935 in Wheta, in the Volta Region, the eldest of ten children, of a family of Sierra Leonean Creole descent on his father's side. His grandmother was an Ewe dirge singer. He attended Achimota School and graduated from the University of Ghana in 1960. He earned a master's degree at University College London in 1970 and a PhD at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1972.

Writing

His first collection, Rediscovery (1964), was written at university and rooted in oral poetry. He later translated three Ewe dirge singers in Guardians of the Sacred Word (1973). In the United States he wrote the novel This Earth, My Brother and the poems Night of My Blood, both published in 1971. In the 1960s he edited the journal Okyeame, co-founded the Ghana Playhouse and wrote radio plays for the BBC.

Prison

He returned in 1975 to head the English department at the University of Cape Coast, but within months was arrested for helping a soldier accused of plotting against the military government and held without trial until October 1976. The House by the Sea (1978) comes from that time.

Diplomat

He was ambassador to Brazil from 1984 to 1988 and then to Cuba, and from 1990 to 1994 Ghana's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, where he chaired the committee against apartheid. He later chaired Ghana's Council of State.

Death

He was in Nairobi for the Storymoja Hay Festival when gunmen attacked the Westgate mall on 21 September 2013, and he was among those killed. He was 78.