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Ťažisko tohto románu spočíva v konfrontácii roztrieštených duševných predstáv o svete s grotesknou skutočnosťou,ktorá sa zakladá na materiálnych hodnotách.Predstavy o svete vyjadruje autor ústami troch hl.postáv:Nána,slepá starena,ktorej uzavretú myseľ znepokojujú jednostaj sa vracajúce sny o Afrike,nie však ženúcej sa do záhuby v honbe za hmotným bohatstvom,ale o Afrike ako o lepšom,humánnejšom spoločenstve.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
28 people are currently reading
870 people want to read
About the author
Ayi Kwei Armah
18 books296 followersBorn to Fante-speaking parents, with his father's side Armah descending from a royal family in the Ga tribe in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, [1] Armah, having attended the renowned Achimota School, left Ghana in 1959 to attend Groton School in Groton, MA. After graduating, he entered Harvard University, receiving a degree in sociology. Armah then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine Révolution Africaine. In 1964, Armah returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo School.
Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. From 1968-1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He lived in Dakar, Senegal, in the 1980s and taught at Amherst and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. From 1968-1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He lived in Dakar, Senegal, in the 1980s and taught at Amherst and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 27, 2014
Another masterpiece from Armah, which deserves to be brought back into print and widely read by anyone with even a passing interest in post-colonial Africa, and/or desirous of reading perfectly crafted prose such as :
"He was a short man, with something swollen and out of shape about his shortness, so that the eye on first seeing him searched unordered for some twisting cause, for something perhaps like a lump on his back. But there was nothing there to explain the twistedness, until the baffled eye descended and was struck in the region of the sweating man's loins with the sight of a scrotal sac so swollen that within the tattered pants containing it it had the look of a third and larger buttock winning a ruthless struggle to push the original two out of the way."
From Derek Wright’s piece on Armah’s work
Fragments depicts the experiences faced by the scholar during his first year home after returning from America. He is hounded into madness by his family because what he brings back from his studies in America is not the instant return of material possessions and prestige which they expect of him, but a moral idealism which protests at the selfish materialism they have absorbed from Western culture. Baako is not the conventional “been-to”, the transitional African whose Western education leaves him ill equipped to deal with traditional African society—Obi in Achebe's No Longer At Ease, for example. He is not caught between Africa and the West, but between the West and a vulgarly Westernized Africa, and reviles the place he returns to only insofar as it imitates the one he has fled from. In his purgatorial passage through the increasingly foreign world of his native Accra, Baako rejects his corrupt government sinecure and abhors his family's materialism, resigns his post at Ghanavision when his idealistic television screenplays are rejected as subversive, recoils in disgust from the colonial posturings of official laureates at state-subsidized literary soirees, and finally, when his inspired notebook expositions on Ghana's modern cargo mentality are mistaken by his mother as signs of madness, is committed to a mental asylum where he really goes mad. The only help Baako receives in his tribulations is the companionship, spiritual and sexual, of the Puerto Rican psychiatrist Juana and the ancient wisdom of his blind grandmother Naana, whose prologue and epilogue encircle in a timeless frame the historical fragmentation recorded in the parallel linear narratives of Baako and Juana.
The urbanized Africa depicted in Fragments is crazed by a lust for commodities and status, and the uncritical eye is overwhelmed by the aggressive beauty of externals: notably, empty titles, pompous-sounding sinecures, and the gaudy trinkets of Western technology, towards which the surviving religious emotions of awe and wonder have, in a faithless age, been driven for a correlative. For Brempong, the strutting "big man" Baako encounters on the plane from Paris, worth is measured wholly by "beautiful things" like his Dutch butane lighter which "seemed to have been sculpted entirely out of light".
Fragments abounds in image-complexes: fragmentation, wholeness of vision and a saving blindness, walls between worlds. But there are two leading metaphors. Firstly, the image of the returning ghost recurs in the various forms of the resurrected cargo-spirit in Baako's analogies, the reincarnated ancestor in Naana's traditional Akan beliefs, the repatriated been-to, and, from local mythology, the visionary lover of Mammy Water back from the sea. These figures advance concurrently across the novel's seamless myth-fabric, each amplifying a pattern of outward passage, the suffering of an actual or figurative death and rebirth into an altered state, and a beneficial return, bearing what may be doubtful blessings. In this multilayered tapestry sentences like the following, from Naana's dream—"But Baako walked among them neither touched nor seen, like a ghost in an overturned world in which all human flesh was white" ~contrive to conflate allusions to cargo ghosts, the ancestral dead turned white in the spirit world, the lonely African in American exile, and the idealistic been-to, walking unheeded and unwelcome among Westernized Ghanaians.
"He was a short man, with something swollen and out of shape about his shortness, so that the eye on first seeing him searched unordered for some twisting cause, for something perhaps like a lump on his back. But there was nothing there to explain the twistedness, until the baffled eye descended and was struck in the region of the sweating man's loins with the sight of a scrotal sac so swollen that within the tattered pants containing it it had the look of a third and larger buttock winning a ruthless struggle to push the original two out of the way."
From Derek Wright’s piece on Armah’s work
Fragments depicts the experiences faced by the scholar during his first year home after returning from America. He is hounded into madness by his family because what he brings back from his studies in America is not the instant return of material possessions and prestige which they expect of him, but a moral idealism which protests at the selfish materialism they have absorbed from Western culture. Baako is not the conventional “been-to”, the transitional African whose Western education leaves him ill equipped to deal with traditional African society—Obi in Achebe's No Longer At Ease, for example. He is not caught between Africa and the West, but between the West and a vulgarly Westernized Africa, and reviles the place he returns to only insofar as it imitates the one he has fled from. In his purgatorial passage through the increasingly foreign world of his native Accra, Baako rejects his corrupt government sinecure and abhors his family's materialism, resigns his post at Ghanavision when his idealistic television screenplays are rejected as subversive, recoils in disgust from the colonial posturings of official laureates at state-subsidized literary soirees, and finally, when his inspired notebook expositions on Ghana's modern cargo mentality are mistaken by his mother as signs of madness, is committed to a mental asylum where he really goes mad. The only help Baako receives in his tribulations is the companionship, spiritual and sexual, of the Puerto Rican psychiatrist Juana and the ancient wisdom of his blind grandmother Naana, whose prologue and epilogue encircle in a timeless frame the historical fragmentation recorded in the parallel linear narratives of Baako and Juana.
The urbanized Africa depicted in Fragments is crazed by a lust for commodities and status, and the uncritical eye is overwhelmed by the aggressive beauty of externals: notably, empty titles, pompous-sounding sinecures, and the gaudy trinkets of Western technology, towards which the surviving religious emotions of awe and wonder have, in a faithless age, been driven for a correlative. For Brempong, the strutting "big man" Baako encounters on the plane from Paris, worth is measured wholly by "beautiful things" like his Dutch butane lighter which "seemed to have been sculpted entirely out of light".
Fragments abounds in image-complexes: fragmentation, wholeness of vision and a saving blindness, walls between worlds. But there are two leading metaphors. Firstly, the image of the returning ghost recurs in the various forms of the resurrected cargo-spirit in Baako's analogies, the reincarnated ancestor in Naana's traditional Akan beliefs, the repatriated been-to, and, from local mythology, the visionary lover of Mammy Water back from the sea. These figures advance concurrently across the novel's seamless myth-fabric, each amplifying a pattern of outward passage, the suffering of an actual or figurative death and rebirth into an altered state, and a beneficial return, bearing what may be doubtful blessings. In this multilayered tapestry sentences like the following, from Naana's dream—"But Baako walked among them neither touched nor seen, like a ghost in an overturned world in which all human flesh was white" ~contrive to conflate allusions to cargo ghosts, the ancestral dead turned white in the spirit world, the lonely African in American exile, and the idealistic been-to, walking unheeded and unwelcome among Westernized Ghanaians.
March 8, 2020
So beautifully talented and touching is Ayi Kwei Armah in his writings of poetic historical fiction. I cry when I read his elaborate, spiritually fueled descriptions of the cycles of life and death; and of what happened to people of Afrikan descent when they lost “the way”. I am grateful for the mind of this man. This is a story I’ll never forget, told in a rather fragmented, yet cohesive fashion. He is an artist of eloquence. The knowledge I gain from reading his books, I’ll pass down to generations to come. He was 29 when he published this book in 1969. It is his 2nd novel after “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born.” Beautiful spelled Beautyful. I will read these stories to my children. Let peace and blessings manifest with every lesson learned.
September 29, 2015
A powerful work by Armah, exploring the arcane world of madness, materialism, and all sorts of misplaced values rather deep-seated. The author's descriptive abilities are amazing indeed and the gallery of characters unfold easily, if disturbingly.
July 30, 2009
This is not Ayi Kwei Armah's best book. I believe this was written shortly after The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, and it carries many of the same themes. Like Beautyful Ones, the main character is a morally righteous man suffering from existential angst and struggling against a corrupt society. In this book, one gets an even stronger feeling that the character is based on Armah himself. Again like Beautyful Ones, Armah uses detailed descriptions of the grotesque in order to render the festering sickness of post-colonial society. Fragments goes a step further by linking the main character's own illness (physical and mental) to the sickness of society, here represented by his family. This is the clumsiest theme of the book, and Armah's pop-psychologizing is a bit embarrassing.
Parts of the book present the Afro-centric, traditionalist themes of later books like 2,000 Seasons in the dense metaphorical style that Armah came to be known for, but other than that Fragments is a wandering book that isn't as fresh and cutting as it was when it was called the Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Furthermore, Fragments uses almost explicit references to French existentialists, as well as Chinua Achebe, that come off awkwardly. I mostly find it interesting as an example of African narratives linking personal health and the health of society.
Parts of the book present the Afro-centric, traditionalist themes of later books like 2,000 Seasons in the dense metaphorical style that Armah came to be known for, but other than that Fragments is a wandering book that isn't as fresh and cutting as it was when it was called the Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Furthermore, Fragments uses almost explicit references to French existentialists, as well as Chinua Achebe, that come off awkwardly. I mostly find it interesting as an example of African narratives linking personal health and the health of society.
July 24, 2012
Fragments is one of those novels that criticised the rush for materialism over the quest for knowledge and discipline that took most African countries by storm in the years following independence.
The following is my review on my blog... http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2009...
Thanks
The following is my review on my blog... http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2009...
Thanks
September 2, 2021
You have a fullness you need to bring out. It's not an emptiness you need to cover up with things.
- Ayi Kwei Armah, Fragments
.
.
This is my first book of Ayi Kwei Armah and certainly it will not be the last. I have to admit that i struggled a bit in the beginning of the story. The author wrote eloquently and often times, i got lost in those verbose and long prose. It is poetic but sometimes it can be a bit too long winded at some parts. The book served as post colonial african literature as we followed the journey of a young graduate, Baako who made it back home once he finished his study in US. However, the societal expectation is getting to him as he was assumed to be rich and successful once he returned. Baako is a righteous man. He often despised how acute his observation when he saw the corruption , red tape and bureaucracy happened infront of him. I found it refreshing when the book was published in 1971 and the author already normalize mental health. We have Juana, A Puerto Rican Psychologist who did counsel Baako on his anxiety. The book did alternate the narrative between Baako and Juana as a way to tell the story of what happened to Baako at the end of this book. The book is full of social commentary - One is the materialism critique - that it is prioritised over knowledge quest, the government incompetence and lack of integrity and the absent of identity / existential crisis of these “Been-to”. Overall, an insightful reading. Would i recommend this? Read at your own risk. It all came together at the end but it takes a while to get there.
- Ayi Kwei Armah, Fragments
.
.
This is my first book of Ayi Kwei Armah and certainly it will not be the last. I have to admit that i struggled a bit in the beginning of the story. The author wrote eloquently and often times, i got lost in those verbose and long prose. It is poetic but sometimes it can be a bit too long winded at some parts. The book served as post colonial african literature as we followed the journey of a young graduate, Baako who made it back home once he finished his study in US. However, the societal expectation is getting to him as he was assumed to be rich and successful once he returned. Baako is a righteous man. He often despised how acute his observation when he saw the corruption , red tape and bureaucracy happened infront of him. I found it refreshing when the book was published in 1971 and the author already normalize mental health. We have Juana, A Puerto Rican Psychologist who did counsel Baako on his anxiety. The book did alternate the narrative between Baako and Juana as a way to tell the story of what happened to Baako at the end of this book. The book is full of social commentary - One is the materialism critique - that it is prioritised over knowledge quest, the government incompetence and lack of integrity and the absent of identity / existential crisis of these “Been-to”. Overall, an insightful reading. Would i recommend this? Read at your own risk. It all came together at the end but it takes a while to get there.
Want to read
April 30, 2013I haven't read Fragments - but Ayi Kwei Armah's reputation and stature as one of the leading lights of post-colonial African literature - puts it on my 'must read before I die' list.
If you like this book or others like it, please join us for Africa Writes. It takes place this year at the British Library from 5-7 July 2013.
For more info on the festival, visit our website: www.royalafricansociety.org/event/afr...
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Dele Meiji Fatunla
Website Editor
Royal African Society
If you like this book or others like it, please join us for Africa Writes. It takes place this year at the British Library from 5-7 July 2013.
For more info on the festival, visit our website: www.royalafricansociety.org/event/afr...
You may also like our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/AfricaWrites
Follow us on twitter - www.twitter.com/royafrisoc
Dele Meiji Fatunla
Website Editor
Royal African Society
Read
May 24, 2017Am not a big poetry fan, but when told from Juana's perspective the poetry really fit well with the themes in the book, her emptiness and loneliness really came out in her poetry. And Baako's analytical mind was well illustrated by his focus on the tiniest details like colour and action. It's a great book that tells an all too familiar story of corruption and disillusionment. However it makes a brilliant turn by not laying the blame solely on Africa's "blind leaders" but also points out the failings of the "impotent masses". As well as the educated who see the system for what it is but still resign themselves to it.
May 23, 2015
A look at the clash between traditional communal living and the individualistic materialism of military-ruled post-Nkrumah Ghana told through a returnee who cannot bear the expectations on him by his family. The prose is classic Armah - long, verbose and poetic. It gets tiring to read at times and the ending is rather unsatisfactory but its theme is one which as so relevant that it is surprising how seldom it appears in Ghanaian literature.
January 9, 2014
Starts off a little too pedantically and is a bit too agenda-driven for my tastes, but still, it's wonderful to be introduced (by a friend) to this Ghanaian writer--and the ending was terrific, if a little overwrought. :)
October 27, 2014
Insightful account of 1960's Ghana and the social pressures of returning graduates.
My father returned to Ghana during that period, and we were small children, but I understand what he is describing. The relatives who expected much in return.
My father returned to Ghana during that period, and we were small children, but I understand what he is describing. The relatives who expected much in return.
September 15, 2015
on the emptiness of consumerism in the face of necessary change
also on confident knowing as resistance (if the posture is possible)
armah makes interesting statements about postcolonial ghana
(i FINALLY finished this book)
also on confident knowing as resistance (if the posture is possible)
armah makes interesting statements about postcolonial ghana
(i FINALLY finished this book)
Read
February 1, 2013Themes
September 20, 2013
1,5 -.-
September 22, 2015
This is a powerful novel that ties personal warfare, love, greed, and excitement into an amazing storyline.
April 21, 2016
One of the best books I ever read, Armahs writing style is incredible, so much attention to detail.
I really reccomend
I really reccomend
Read
July 11, 2016full summary of the book
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 6, 2017
Read it many years ago. Wonderful reading, as I recall. Will definitely consider reading again.
March 21, 2018
I love it.
December 29, 2024
”If I thought I could still understand, I would be saying that I know the seed and the growing root of the restlessness that possessed the returned traveler and brought the others to shouting madness upon his head. He has been so quiet; and when in his presence, I have often felt a readiness to go away, a readiness like mine. But perhaps it is only that I have begun this thing the old ones spoke about: the habit those about to travel have of seeing a like readiness to go in all else around themselves. When I go I will protect him if I can, and if my strength is not enough I will seek out stronger spirits and speak to their souls of his need of them.”
Ayi Kwei Armah tells the story of Baako, a young Ghanaian man who returns home from his studies abroad. Baako immediately runs into local corruption and his family's materialistic expectations of their son's homecoming. Here, Armah eloquently portrays the despair of a socially minded (yet to be) artist in an immoral system where corrupt leaders are just a fraction of the problem. Yet Armah does not morally elevate his protagonist over all else: he subtly describes the paralysis that lies in Baako's complete mental isolation from his family. In fact, it is possible that his blind grandmother, who is still authentically connected to cultural traditions and the spirit world, is the only one who does not suffer from the epidemic of emptiness (depicted throughout the book). Although at one point Baako sees spiritualism as a precursor to his cargo theory and struggles to connect with cultural traditions, the grandmother’s narration, grounded in ancestral worldviews, beautifully unites with Baako’s idealism for an Afrocentric and socially just Ghana, as they both share a frustration with the decay inflicted by Western consumerism.
Overall, this book is beautifully written, poetic, and besides masterfully describing the psyche being torn apart from opposing pressures it also has vivid scenes that besides being realistic and advancing Baako's storyline, are their own social microcosm waiting to be unpacked. Importantly, there is also a love-story between two deserted individuals, Baako and a psychiatrist Juana. I highly recommend this reading, wonder why it isn’t a widely read classic, and will eagerly dive into the rest of Armah’s work!
Ayi Kwei Armah tells the story of Baako, a young Ghanaian man who returns home from his studies abroad. Baako immediately runs into local corruption and his family's materialistic expectations of their son's homecoming. Here, Armah eloquently portrays the despair of a socially minded (yet to be) artist in an immoral system where corrupt leaders are just a fraction of the problem. Yet Armah does not morally elevate his protagonist over all else: he subtly describes the paralysis that lies in Baako's complete mental isolation from his family. In fact, it is possible that his blind grandmother, who is still authentically connected to cultural traditions and the spirit world, is the only one who does not suffer from the epidemic of emptiness (depicted throughout the book). Although at one point Baako sees spiritualism as a precursor to his cargo theory and struggles to connect with cultural traditions, the grandmother’s narration, grounded in ancestral worldviews, beautifully unites with Baako’s idealism for an Afrocentric and socially just Ghana, as they both share a frustration with the decay inflicted by Western consumerism.
Overall, this book is beautifully written, poetic, and besides masterfully describing the psyche being torn apart from opposing pressures it also has vivid scenes that besides being realistic and advancing Baako's storyline, are their own social microcosm waiting to be unpacked. Importantly, there is also a love-story between two deserted individuals, Baako and a psychiatrist Juana. I highly recommend this reading, wonder why it isn’t a widely read classic, and will eagerly dive into the rest of Armah’s work!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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September 11, 2025A sensitive writer returns to his native Ghana after years in a Western university and struggles to deal with the brutal capitalism of post-Colonial Africa. Armah is at once a remarkably talented writer as well as a perceptive social critic, and this is excellent if perhaps not quite as strong as The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, which was a bit more esoteric.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews