In this epic poem, Kwakye (The Executioner's Confession, 2015, etc.) recounts the lives of two Ghanaian twins—one good, one evil—from birth to death.

These are no ordinary twins—they don’t share the same parents, and upon his birth, Kobi the Magician, stands up, cuts his umbilical cord, and informs his mother that he’s self-sufficient and needs her only for spiritual support. Three attending midwives prophesy that he’s destined for greatness and try to introduce him to his twin brother, Paa Quartey. Kobi comes from modest circumstances, however, and Paa’s parents are rich. The senior Quarteys throw the midwives out, after which the women become captives in a forest and perish when voices of the sea entice them into drowning. Meanwhile, young Kobi excels in athletics and his studies, even correcting and teaching his grateful teachers, while young Quartey grows up as a spoiled brat whose doting parents think he’s a prodigy but who flops at everything he tries. After becoming a skillful fisherman, Kobi meets his foreordained twin while delivering fish to his mansion. Despite the parents’ misgivings, the twins bond. Kobi helps his increasingly dissolute brother as he launches a political career. The good twin writes earnest speeches for his brother, even though Paa is “a drinking, partying slob” and “a pampered, and arrogant snob” who revels in drunken orgies and “ménages a beaucoup.” Paa kills a woman in a drunken hit-and-run, and the story ends as a mob storms the twins’ hideout. Kwakye’s imaginative tale takes place in Ghana but could just as easily be set in the United States or any country beset by corruption, any place “where the tall / in intellect are mocked and then entrapped within / manacles of the powerful.” Rhyming quatrains move the story along with wit and grace, and despite the tragic outcome, Kwakye’s writing contains exuberant humor, often sexual or scatological, and cutting insights into human nature, especially the hypocrisy and sycophancy of the hangers-on who feed off the powerful with “faked genuflections and wordy words.”

A darkly humorous modern take on the fleeting triumph of money, corruption, deceit, and evil.

A literary novel tells the story of two couples a continent apart.

Ama Danso, a 29-year-old doctor based in California, is visiting her hometown of Accra, Ghana. She is seated with her friend Abby at a waterfront restaurant when she first sees a figure—the Shoreman—rise from the surf: “The shine of moon-glow on his bared upper torso seemed to carve him out as a dark sparkle on the shoreline. Like a shadow that held light.” She does not speak to him, but the two friends return several times hoping to cross his path. When they finally do, Ama learns his name is Shem Bonsra, but he is reluctant to speak to her for more than a few minutes at a time. Over the course of several dates, Ama learns that Shem has a tragic, fiery past, and that he now works as a nightsoil carrier. This second bit of information causes Ama to stop seeing him—the stigma would be too great—but she cannot get him out of her mind. Meanwhile, in a London pub, a physician named Maud James encounters a guy she calls the Barman. She soon realizes he’s George Stanton, a leader of a far-right political party. His nationalist politics appeal to Maud, whose white father was murdered by black men in her native Zimbabwe. The tales of these couples—Ama and Shem, Maud and George—seem starkly different, but their futures are all bound up together in this novel that explores the interconnected modern world. Kwakye’s (Songs of a Jealous Wind, 2018, etc.) prose finds the tension in the strangeness of place, as here when Ama searches for Shem in the nightsoil-disposing town of Old Fadama: “The town was barely alive and, except for the moon glow, it was totally dark. Even before they got close to the cesspit, they could smell the poignant odor. But they got closer anyway, surrendering safety of body and comfort of nostrils.” The plot moves slowly, and there is never much indication of where it is going. But a bubbling mysteriousness rooted in desire and longing will propel readers ever deeper into this idiosyncratic story.

An oddly compelling tale of two connected couples separated by geography and culture.