My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa

My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa

by John Dramani Mahama
My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa

My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa

by John Dramani Mahama

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Overview

MY FIRST COUP D'ETAT is a literary nonfiction account that charts the coming of age of John Dramani Mahama in Ghana during the dismal post-independence "lost decades" of Africa. He was seven years old when rumors of that first coup reached his boarding school in Accra. His father was suddenly missing. "It is sometimes incorrectly referred to in texts as a bloodless coup, yet it was anything but," Mahama writes. "They tried, as best they could, with smiles and toffee, to shield me from their rising anxiety but I could feel it bouncing off the quick sideways glances they shot one another and taking flight like some dark, winged creature." John's father, a Minister of State, was in prison for more than a year. MY FIRST COUP D'ETAT offers a look at the country that has long been considered Africa's success story--from its founding as the first sub-Saharan nation to gain independence, to its current status as the only nation on the continent to have, thus far, met the majority of targets on hunger, poverty, and education set by the U.N. But these stories work on many levels--as fables, as history, as cultural and political analysis, and of course as the memoir of a young man who, unbeknownst to him or anyone else, is destined to become a leader in his own land. These are stories that rise above their specific settings and transport the reader--much like the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Nadine Gordimer--into a world all their own, one which straddles a time lost and explores the universal human emotions of love, fear, faith, despair, loss, longing, and hope despite all else.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781608198863
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 07/03/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 336
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

His Excellency John Dramani Mahama is a writer, historian, communications expert, former member of Parliament and Minister of State, and sitting President of the Republic of Ghana. He lives in Accra, Ghana.
John Dramani Mahama is a writer, historian, journalist, former member of Parliament and minister of state, and sitting vice president of the Republic of Ghana. This is his first book. He lives in Accra with his family and is currently at work on his second book.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The "Lost Decades" 1

My First Coup d'Etat 7

The District Commissioner's Hat 17

Of Silence and Solidarity 39

Wild Lions and Little Boys with Catapults 52

Full Moon Dance 65

How I Got My Christian Name 81

Sankofa 105

Teenagers in Tamale 123

Frozen Fire 139

Praise for the Powerful 161

Union Government 180

Truth Stands 197

Perilous Crossings 210

Ghana Must Go 240

Providence 264

Tovarisch 286

Coda: Return of Hope ... Anaa? 304

Acknowledgements 315

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