Accra joins Lagos, Nairobi, Marrakech, and Addis Ababa in representing the African continent in the Noir Series arena.
“Superb . . . Each story reaffirms how fundamental ‘place’ is to the noir genre and how the locale shapes the story as much as the characters themselves . . . Strongly recommended.” —
Library Journal
“There’s good writing as well as a strong sense of place and culture, and the reader will absorb a side of Accra that doesn’t make it into the tourist brochures.” —
New York Journal of Books
Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with
Brooklyn Noir
. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.
Brand-new stories by: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Kwame Dawes, Adjoa Twum, Kofi Blankson Ocansey, Billie McTernan, Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo, Patrick Smith, Anne Sackey, Gbontwi Anyetei, Nana-Ama Danquah, Ayesha Harruna Attah, Eibhlín Ní Chléirigh, and Anna Bossman.
From the introduction by Nana-Ama Danquah
:
"Accra is the perfect setting for noir fiction. The telling of such tales—ones involving or suggesting death, with a protagonist who is flawed or devious, driven by either a self-serving motive or one of the seven deadly sins—is woven into the fabric of the city’s everyday life . . .
"Accra is more than just a capital city. It is a microcosm of Ghana. It is a virtual map of the nation’s soul, a complex geographical display of its indigenous presence, the colonial imposition, declarations of freedom, followed by coups d’état, decades of dictatorship, and then, finally, a steady march forward into a promising future . . .
"Much like Accra, these stories are not always what they seem. The contributors who penned them know too well how to spin a story into a web . . . It is an honor and a pleasure to share them and all they reveal about Accra, a city of allegories, one of the most dynamic and diverse places in the world."