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I first came into contact with Kwesi Brew's poetic dispensations to mankind through the Henry Swanzy anthology to celebrate Ghana's attainment of independence, The Voices of Ghana, (1957) and the Okyeame Magazine whose maiden edition I had the honour of distributing to shops in 1960 from the office of Miss Cecile McHardy, the Secretary of the Ghana Society of Authors (now the Ghana Association of Writers, GAW). She was the Secretary to Commander Jackson, then in charge of the Volta River Project.

A bracing, angry poem by Kofi Anyidoho on the universality of slums. written at the height of 'revolution' in Ghana. "There are no lights in the slums but there are flames in the hearts of slum dwellers"

A bracing, angry poem by Kofi Anyidoho on the universality of slums. written at the height of 'revolution' in Ghana. "There are no lights in the slums but there are flames in the hearts of slum dwellers"

a cloud of moving chaos. They were loudmouthed too, the boys. Insults catapulted from their mouths like spat phlegm. All in the basest Ga, the language they dreamed in but were forbidden to speak at school. "Your head like calabash."

But there is another kind of desertion that haunts the novel: the British colonial experience. Indeed, Gurnah seems to suggest that Britain "deserted" its colonies, like the islands of Zanzibar, before the time was right.

The £60,000 Man Booker International prize goes today to the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and not a little too soon. Things Fall Apart beats Heart of Darkness... I called it a year ago... Now to finish the series (only 32 more to go). Next step: Profit?

There are moments, when her ability to look suffering squarely in the eye and describe it in all its horror can be enough to make you take a brisk walk before returning to the next sentence. Here is language that does justice to the suffering of gods.