Overview

A genre-breaking novel from a powerful new African voice

It is 2019, The Year of Return. Ghana is inviting Black diasporans to return and get to know the land of their enslaved ancestors. Elton, Vincent, and Scott arrive from America to explore Ghana’s colonial past, and to experience the country's underground queer scene. Their visit and activities are narrated by two very different Ghanians: the exuberant and rebellious Kobby, who is their guide to Accra’s privileged and queer circles; and Nana, the voice of tradition and religious principle. Neither is very trustworthy and the tense relationship between them sets the tone for what turns into a gripping, energetically told, and often funny tale of murder reminiscent of the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Graham Greene, Chinua Achebe, and Alain Mabanckou.

★ “Three American gay men travel to Ghana to pay homage to their enslaved ancestors and explore the country’s queer underground scene in the audacious debut from Ghanaian book critic Ben Ben...wildly inventive...The sheer wonder of Ben Ben’s narrative design anchors the reader in the immersive maelstrom of voices. The results are propulsive and deliciously irreverent in equal measure.”—Publishers Weekly(starred review)

★ “A cinematic, cutting, and smart debut novel...Ben Ben rejects prevailing colonial narratives with this graphic rock opera of murder, sex, and tourism.”— Booklist (starred review)

“Dark, unsettling, utterly addictive.”—African Arguments

“We’re walked through the who and why in a sometimes funny, sometimes spicy tale.”—Book Riot

“A book that brims with possibilities, contradictions, jokes, puzzles, detours, ambiguities, secrets and metafictional tricks and twists.”— Yagnishsing Dawoor, The Guardian

Kobby Ben Ben was born in Ghana, where he is a prominent book reviewer and runs the African Book Club and the Ghana Must Read website. His eccentric Instagram book blog, @bookworm_man, has caught the attention of Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo, as well as Maaza Mengiste and Petina Gappah, among others. No One Dies Yet is his first novel.