A thrilling, sometimes disturbing tale and an unusual take on a murder story. Three black gay Americans arrive in their ancestral home of Ghana for the 'Year of Return' celebrations, facing hostility on two fronts: for being gay and from native Ghanaians resenting outsiders taking over their homeland. Narrated in turns by their two guides, one gay and the other homophobic, their relationship is one of the most intriguing aspects of the book.
Nana and I are two local guides with differing ideas of how stories are to be told. I, the first of the guides in narrative order, relays his story in the English of our newspapers. Nana tells his in the tradition of our cultures, of grandmothers dancing and clapping and telling stories by the fireside. It’s a conflict of languages, between the old culture and the new, the oral and the written. Newspapers and drums. Nana and me. Who dies first? No one dies yet.
