Akosua and Osman

<p><em><strong>“Karatu farkonka madaci karshenka zuma.” </strong></em></p><p>(Study is difficult but the rewards are great.)</p><p>Akosua Annan is a confident and fiercely intelligent student at a posh school in Cape Coast Ghana. There she comes under the influence of a charismatic feminist teacher.</p><p>Osman Said’s background is very different. Upon the death of his parents a police sergeant and an unschooled market trader immigrants to Accra from the North he is adopted by a retired school teacher Hajia Zainab. After a spell as an apprentice in an auto workshop he returns to school. There finding the teaching inadequate he becomes an avid reader and educates himself.</p><p>Akosua and Osman are thrown together by chance in the course of a school visit to the slave dungeon at Cape Coast Castle. Their paths cross again as finalists in the national school debating competition where the subject is “The problem of poverty in Ghana is insoluble.”</p><p>They meet for the third time as students at the University of Ghana and as we leave them it looks as if their relationship might develop into something permanent.</p><p>“This fascinating novel tells the story of how these two young people from these disparate backgrounds are brought together as if by an unseen hand in a process that teaches us about our history our common humanity despite ethnic differences the need to pursue our ambitions the strength of human sexuality and the need for self-discipline and above all the power of love.” The Judges Burt Award for African Literature 2011.</p>