Customer Reviews

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

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I have just finished reading this book a few hours ago, and although I have barely had time to digest its contents, it has to be considered a modern literary classic. I read it for a Western African history class, and although I think it helps to have a rudimentary understanding of Ghana's post-independence history, this novel definitely stands on its own literary merit. "The Man" (as he is referred to) is an honest and introspective individual torn apart by the corruption and greed of his society. This creates conflict between not only him and the majority of the world around him, but also between him and his family. This book speaks volumes of the nature of a society that has been decimated by the repressive rule of an entirely different culture. Ayi Kwei Armah weaves beautiful poetry, intellectual insight, and explicit (and at times repulsive- but that is the desired effect) imagery into his story. The reader can truly feel the struggle and search for balance of the man. Humorous at times, depressing at others, "The Beautyful Ones" is a moving masterpiece. "As he went down a shadow rose up the bottom wall to meet him, and it was his own."

Set during the last days of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and noted exponent of Pan-Africanism, this book chronicles the fortunes and misfortunes of "the man," the nameless focalizer of Armah's finely crafted novel, who struggles to retain some semblance of integrity, barely surviving in a country where corruption is "the national game." Intense, introspective, darkly melancholic but never misanthropic, Armah's novel celebrates a strong sense of hope in the midst of savage adversity, the small but not insignifcant victories that enable "the man" to live from day to day -- such existentia Africana is a philosophy forged on the anvil of hard toil and experience.

Armah's book is among the best. Dense and ponderous yet eloquent use of symbolism is what made this book most enjoyable for me. A great introduction to Ghanaian literature, it captures many aspects of life there, past and present, with wonderful adeptness. Utilizing beautiful imagery, the style is very fluid, while leaving diverse impressions. Though the overall tone is something of a justified bitter, this book leaves the sweet aftertaste only fulfilling reading can and a yearning for more of Armah's masterful writing.

Armah chooses the post independent Ghana as the setting of his novel.It is clear that the author strictly abides by the norms of afro-pessimism.The novel is not one to be recommended to a prospective tourist to Ghana unless one is looking for 'juicy vaginas' or women who change men like pants. The novel is written by a disillusioned writer and onlooker, someone who had been lured by the ideals sold through the promises of better days with the help of socialism.Armah is horrified by the gravity of prevailing decay in his country. He is like a modern Hamlet who is helplessly exclaiming at the extent of the rot-his Ghana is rotten.Political degradation is the tip of the iceberg as social degradation,moral illusion and identity crisis have led the nation to a sort of modern Hades, the population is silently living in Plato's cave-a cave which represents ignorance.This cave reminds me of the teacher's room.He is the enlightened to whom nobody pays heed except the man.The man who appears weak to fight the gnawing corruption can hardly react when the bus conductor spits at him or when his bossy mother in law rebukes him for refusing to 'make the leap', 'to play the national game of Ghana' and to accept the 'gleam'.Along with Koomson he passes through the latrine but cleanses himself in the sea water.Who is tha man who wants to teach us how to live in a corrupt world?Is he the beautiful one?

Published in 1968, this was Armah's first novel. It depicted corruption and societal breakdown in a newly independent African nation, seen through the eyes of a citizen disillusioned by the materialism and decay he encountered, who found himself struggling to maintain his integrity.

The book was based on the experience of Ghanaians in the late 1950s and 1960s under the administration of Kwame Nkrumah. The nation's first leader after independence, he mismanaged the economy and was overthrown two years before the novel's publication. The work's considered to be among the key novels that began to reflect criticism of newly established native African governments following the exhilaration of freedom from colonial rule.

Regrettably, I found the first two-thirds of the book to be plodding and often obscure, and the action uninteresting. It took 60 pages, one-third of the novel, to get the main character from a bus to an office to his home, through conversations with a bus driver, a relative, his wife and a teacher. Initially, there was little description of the characters' thoughts other than through dialogue. New characters were introduced abruptly, with little clue as to who they were; for example, the woman named Manaan in Chapter 6. Sixty pages into the book, a nameless, first-person narrator began speaking for half a chapter before dropping out.

Too many of these passages went something like this:

"Question bounces off unheeded as the naked man gets up off the bed, takes a pencil from the top of the bookcase near the bed and sticks it in to mark the page. He puts the book on the case and sits back down on the bed, pushing his back against the head and drawing up his knees."

And 40 pages later, this:

"The naked man stood up on the bed and tried to reach over to the door and take down a pair of trousers hanging on a nail behind it, but at his touch the door swung left and away from him, and he had to jump down and go round to get the trousers. He slipped them on over his naked body and took down a T-shirt from another nail."

Many of these passages called to mind the style of the French New Novelists: painstaking description of moment-by-moment action to create a certain atmosphere, combined with a deemphasis of character, background and plot. Maybe this style was considered suitable for conveying the atmosphere of powerlessness. Disliking the style, I found it tedious and hard to appreciate.

Closer toward the book's end, more of the main character's thoughts began to be gradually introduced. The last third of the novel, describing an important dinner at the main character's home with a corrupt representative of the regime and the fateful aftermath, was written in a more realistic way and told a more dramatic story, where plot and character came more sharply into focus. The ending seemed appropriate and was far from optimistic.

For me, the novel was most memorable for its descriptions of the indignities of the new country: enslaving admiration for those with material wealth, no matter how it was gained; the humiliation and envy of those who lacked it; a dead-end job and the virtual absence of hope or an opportunity to better oneself; corruption and the pressure to join in and trade integrity for scraps, for the sake of one's children. And the ultimate futility of it all, what the author called the "horrible cycle of the powerless."

The novel was also memorable for its variety of pungent images of filth, which served to communicate both the urban atmosphere and moral decay:

"Sounds arise and kill all smells as the bus pulls into the dormitory town. Past the big public lavatory the stench claws inward to the throat. Sometimes it is understandable that people spit so much, when all around decaying things push inward and mix all the body's juices with the taste of rot . . . . Hot smell of caked s--- split by afternoon's baking sun, now touched by still evaporating dew. The nostrils, incredibly, are joined in a way that is most horrifying direct to the throat itself and to the entrails right through to their end."

Although I found much of the book's style uninteresting until the last third, by the end the writer had managed to convey a strong sense of what life was like, physically and psychologically, under a corrupt regime.

Not any one of Soyinka's or Achebe's books can hold a candle to this particular work by Ayi Kwei Armah. I studied this book for a critical appreciation of Literature course at University in the '80s and until this moment the grating images of corruption and a derelict society that breeds corruption upon itself still erupts vividly in my head. Ayi Kwei Armah succinctly and subtly depicts corruption through his writing with bold imagery and flawless writing.
You would pick this book up to read three decades after it was written, and it would still seem like a novel that just came out; it still rings true to this day in many corrupt societies and it is a book that should be up there with the greatest literary giants of our time.

T.J. Nanna, Author: Mind Untamed: Collected Poems

Beautiful Ones was required reading at secondary school. I didn't quite understand it, all the same it left an impression, and early this year i sought it out. It is an amazing book. Two weeks of careful reading, my copy is left heavily lined and dog-eared.

I strongly recommend it to all budding social revolutionaries.

It is one lone man's struggle against seemingly inescapable corruption and filth. A "settled mind"/resolved principles triumphs in the face of hunger, severe poverty, a nagging wife and his own conscience.

His stance is eventually justified when the corrupt government along with his much envied politician friend falls.

There is a lot of filth- environment, human nature, even language. Nothing is spared. Its easy to get caught up in its general ugliness. This is ironically the beauty of the book and does not rob it of its essence. For those who have not been exposed to widespread corruption, rotteness or had to struggle with "doing the right thing" and against all the odds, it may seem a "sick book".

This is a great book. It's funny, and is very insightful into human nature. The author does a great job of taking us to the setting, and one feels as though one were there. Which is what great writers can do.

This speaks volumes about how the West conquered Africa. The prose is imperfect, but it is beautiful and the story is haunting long after the final page.

Ayi Kwei Armah vividly depicts the mephitic effluvium that the ruling elite in Ghana have subjected the masses to. The masses languish in squalor and misery while the powers that be swim in affluence. If you ever wanted to know how the tax payers' money in most African countries is spent, this novel is worth reading. Laudably, time is against these ticks. What has always seemed an elephant for this propertied and privileged class is slowly turning into a grave. More than anything else, Armah's diction and description place him on the map of revered African novelists.