Biography Essay

Ayi Kwei Armah is perhaps the most versatile, innovative, and provocative of the younger generation of postwar African novelists, and like all authors who express extreme views in their books, he has become a controversial figure—in both African and Western critical circles—but the controversy has centered exclusively on the works and not on the man, about whom extremely little is known. Armah is a very private person. He gives no interviews, attends no conferences or writers' workshops, releases no press statements, and does not seek to promote or publicize his work outside of Africa in any way. Only twice, when provoked beyond endurance by the American critic Charles Larson's misreading of his novels and later, in a mellower mood, when correcting an African critic's errors about his education, has Armah broken his rule of silence about himself and his work, and it...