Search Sweet Country (HC) (2012)

Search Sweet Country--one of the greatest novels ever to come out of the African continent--follows the lives of an eclectic and inextricably interconnected group of Ghanaians living in and around the sprawling, chaotic city of Accra in the mid-1970s. Bringing to life the bustling markets and bars in dizzying, lyrical prose, Laing weaves a story filled with bizarre and often melancholy characters: an idealistic professor, a lovely young witch, a wide-eyed student, a corrupt politician and his hack sidekick, a business-savvy young woman, a healer, a bishop, a crazy man intent on founding his own village. Their collective narratives create a portrait of a country where colonialism is dying, but democracy remains elusive.

Search Sweet Country is a timeless, near-forgotten gem by a virtuosic writer whose bold and bawdy voice and deep wisdom are as necessary now as they were when the book was first published. Like Joyce's Dublin and Dickens's London, Laing's Accra brims with both lush specificity and universal relevance. First published in 1986, this new edition comes beautifully packaged and with a foreword by Binyavanga Wainaina, winner of the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing, and director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at Bard College.