Tail of the Blue Bird

Parkes, Nii Ayikwei

Vintage Digital

A woman spots a stunning blue-headed bird at the edge of a Ghanaian village follows it. Sonokrom is a place that has not changed for hundreds of years; the men and women speak the language of the forest, drink aphrodisiacs with their palm wine and commune with the spirits of their ancestors. However, the woman's intrusion and ensuing events lead to an invasion from Accra, the capital city, spearheaded by Kayo; a young forensic pathologist convinced that scientific logic can shatter even the most inexplicable of mysteries. But as events in the village become more and more incomprehensible, Kayo and his sidekick, Constable Garba are drawn into a world where storytelling is more powerful than any scientific explanation. Tail of the Blue Bird is a poetic fable, at once unsettling and heart-warmingly funny, that exemplifies the futility of trying to categorise Africa, reminding us that the boundaries of truth have never been clear cut.

Literature & Fiction

Literary

flipped eye publishing limited

The Ga Picture Alphabet (Ga Edition)

Children's Books

Early Learning

Kane Series

This stunning new collection from Nii Ayikwei Parkes features poems which embrace play, love and the ephemeral such as water bodies, blood/heritage, history and gossip; and a healthy dose of music and popular culture.Concerned with the phase of life sometimes referred to as the midlife crisis, The Geez navigates the blurred lines between age and youth; the real and the imagined; what is seen and what is - what catches the gaze and what lies beneath. Conceived in four sections, the collection moves from play, to love, to gossip and - finally - to explorations of the intersections of self and contemporary culture, including a segment inspired by blues legends, riffing on the myth of the crossroads, as well as an eleven-part love letter to the African diaspora - specifically African-Americans, whose sacrifices have contributed to the still-suppressed freedoms of Black folk globally. A number of the poems in The Geez are written in a form called the Gimbal, which was developed by Nii - initially to work through his enduring grief at the loss of his father. It evokes the workings of a gyroscope - spinning but stable -a state that echoes the liminality that anchors this collection.

The Geez

Poetry

Peepal Tree Press Ltd.

Notre quelque part

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

ZULMA

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Books by Parkes, Nii Ayikwei