Transcendent Kingdom
YAA GYASI
The Ghanaian writer's second novel is a whirlwind whose narrative revolves around a scientist called Gifty and the tragedy that strikes her family and forever changes their lives. Gifty's parents, referred to as the Chin Chin Man and Nana, migrate to the US from Kumasi and there they try to raise their two children, Gifty and her brotherthe family's dreams of a perfect American life unravel: the long hours her mother works; the racism the two children face at school; the way her father – tired of coping with the difficulties of America – leaves the family and returns to Ghana. The Chin Chin Man's departure is the first of the heartbreaks the family face, with each of them dealing with the departure in different ways. Nana makes expensive long-distance calls to try to convince him to come back; Gifty retreats into herself; Buzz adopts a steady indolence, and acts as though his father does not exist. Years later, with Gifty now a scientist, she reflects on her family and wonders how their lives would have been different had her father not left, or had Buzz not developed an opioid addiction and committed suicide in his adolescence. Through searing prose, Gyasi eviscerates the idea of the American dream, and describes how the traumas a person faces can cause them to unravel years later.
