Kojo Laing belongs to the generation of Ghanaian writers that immediately follows Ayi Kwei Armah (1939- ) and Kofi Awoonor (1935- ). He gained prominence during the 1980s as one of the most prolific and original imaginative writers in West Africa, first emerging as an important poet in the 1970s but not widely known until after the publication of his first novel in 1986. His densely packed physical imagery and allusions, which reviewers have regarded as either Surrealist or magical realist, are fundamentally African, indeed specifically Ghanaian, in their emotional, spiritual, and material sources. Laing's style, however, is not a product of exclusivist cultural nationalism and does not mimic the structural patterns of either indigenous Ghanaian languages or local nonstandard varieties of English (except, of course, as appropriate in the mouth of a particular character). As contributions to the continuing debate on the value of the European official languages as media...