He is presenting us with an original murder mystery, an adventure story that moves beyond fact-based evidence with believable, well drawn characters. ![]() It feels good to read an entertaining story like this: Tail of the Blue Bird by Ghanaian writer, Nii Ayikwei Parkes. (I think I completely missed the relevance of the blue bird but that's what you get for coming from a place of ignorance.) Hugely atmospheric all the way and a fascinating read. Very much not written to pander to the white European reader-lots of pidgin dialogue and Ghanaian words, which go untranslated, and the only words that are italicised as exotic are the English ones that have been imported into the African languages. It's beautifully interwoven, and beautifully written overall-the atmosphere of both the big city and the tiny village come across incredibly powerfully. What follows is both a ?murder mystery involving forensics and deduction and a marvellous tale of traditions and beliefs from a village that has barely changed in centuries. They draft in a young Ghanaian who qualified in forensic pathology in Britain but unable to find a police post at home because of the lack of funding / his lack of connections. When a minister's girlfriend comes across a horrific lump of flesh in a remote Ghanaian village, the police are called in. This combines a state-of-the-nation read, a detective story, and a folk tale or fable. The tension lies between Kayo’s western forensic education and the traditional wisdom of the village and neither have all the answers. ![]() It’s a well told tale, written with a certain lyrical intensity and you can certainly tell Parkes is a poet. There are glossaries around for some of the dialect words. There is a good sense of humour running through the whole and the ending suitably blurred. In doing so he also exposes the role of domestic violence in traditional relationships holding a light up to positive and negative in traditional wisdom. Traditional labels are twisted as in Parkes’ poetry Kayo uses non-western wisdom and the poetic story of the hunter to solve the problem (although not perhaps in a traditional sense. There is mystery and a little magic realism. Despite his forensic skills the mystery is not easily soluble and Kayo has to listen to traditional storytelling methods of solving the problem. Kayo is not a traditional detective hero he lives with his parents, is not alcoholic or a drug addict, respects his elders and treats women with respect and has no disturbing personal habits. The setting is away from modern metropolitan life and transplanted into Africa. Kayo even finds himself a sidekick, Constable Garba and in many ways this is a traditional whodunit looking at the tensions between science and superstition, tradition and modernity. There are two narrators Kayo and a hunter from the village, Opanyin. There are wheels within wheels and Kayo is made an offer he can’t refuse by a corrupt police officer and finds himself investigating the circumstances with orders to get the right result. The girlfriend of a minister finds something that may be human remains in a village in the interior. He has returned to Ghana and is working for a company doing mundane forensic work for a private company and hoping for something better. ![]() It focuses on Kayo, a forensic scientist trained in Britain and who had worked for a British police force. ![]() What’s in a name? Everything, in this case, since Supernat is the place to be if you want to a great array of low-intervention bottles from Catalunya to Quebec.A classic whodunit detective novel set in Ghana, with a literary flavour, written by a poet, with a sharp and perceptive use of local dialect. Chef Martin Juneau and partners have stepped down and passed the torch to the restaurant’s chef and pastry chef who have renamed it Restaurant J aja and are staying the course with its natural and biodynamic wine collection and excellent food.Ĥ316 Saint-Catherine Street East | Website Pastaga was one of the precursors of the natural wine movement in Montréal. The staff and service are the loveliest and so are some of the low-intervention wines served here from some of the best private importers in town. A father/daughter collab, Paloma specializes in the cuisine of the Southern France with some Italian influences added in for good measure.
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