Even though heĬannot easily afford the food, he is filled with happiness and satisfaction that he can own such things-and garner admiring looks from the other people in the shops. Later, the man goes to buy expensive imported food for a dinner he and Oyo are hosting for Koomson and his wife, Estie. The next day, the man goes to work and encounters many forms of bodily waste-including excrement and vomit-as well as physical environments which are molding and deteriorating. Teacher, although he has given up all hope himself, encourages the man to remain steadfast. He slips out at night to meet with his friend Teacher, who helps him to discuss his feelings of guilt and shame. The man feels guilty, even though he knows that he hasn’t done anything wrong.
Oyo comments on a deal Koomson has mentioned to her involving fishing boats that she believes will make their family rich. Upon returning home, he is confronted by his wife, Oyo, who does not understand why the man refuses to participate in financial dealings which would better their family’s life. On his way home, he runs into his old classmate Koomson, who is now a corrupt minister in Nkrumah’s government. Working as a railway clerk, the unnamed protagonist refuses a bribe at work. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born focuses on life in post-independence Ghana and takes place between Passion Week in 1965 and Febru(the day after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president). The novel tells the story of an unnamed man who struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana. It was published in 1968 by Houghton Mifflin, and then republished in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series in 1969.
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the debut novel by Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah.
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