Review: Tail of the blue bird

I bought this novel by Ghanaian author Nii Ayikwei Parkes as an e-book while I was in iso with Covid in Ghana in 2022 and had finished all my hard-copy books. It would have been the ideal place to read it because I could have got immediate explanations and translations from my Ghanaian in-laws, but I couldn’t get the download to open.

Even once I was back in Australia, it took a few weeks to get the download sorted and by then I had lost momentum and no need for e-books. But finally, I have read it! And perhaps being at home is a better place to read the book after all, because it immersed me in the sights and smells and sounds of Ghana which I enjoyed a lot, after more than a year’s absence from a country that is in some ways my second home.

Tail of the Blue Bird is told from two perspectives, alternating between the voice of Opanyin (elder) Poku, a hunter and storyteller living in the small, traditional village of Sonokrom, and the third-person narrative of the experiences of Kayo Odamtten, a young Ghanaian man who trained and worked as a forensic doctor in the UK. On returning to Ghana Kayo has had to settle for working as a lab manager: the local police have no interest in employing a forensic scientist.

There are SPOILERS (sorry).