A REVIEW OF BOOKS I READ IN 2022…

Five days after sharing my list of books I read in 2021 with some friends on a Friday night in December, I got a message on my phone. It came from a friend who had enquired about my reading plans for the coming year.

I made the decision to do nothing except drink a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon wine that I had received from a long-time friend in the final hours of the year. I had the books I planned to read for the upcoming year in the back of my mind. I finally decided on 30.

I set a reading target of 30 books for 2022. I am excited to announce that I have achieved my milestone 15 days ahead of schedule. I am not going to say it was easy, but the feeling of this accomplishment fulfils me. In the next few pages, I am going to share the books I read for the year with you, my cherished readers.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four. Few novels in the last century have had more influence than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The bleak novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, is about Winston Smith, a low-ranking member of ‘the Party,’ who is irritated by the party’s pervasive eyes and its menacing leader Big Brother. Themes regarding press freedoms, government spying, totalitarianism, and how a tyrant can distort history, ideas, and lives in such a way that no one can escape it are all deftly explored by Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four is both a thought-provoking political essay and a horrifying, moving work of art. For the post-truth society we currently live in, Nineteen Eighty-Four almost comes across as a prophetic prediction rather than the warning that Orwell set it out to be. This novel serves as a warning to humanity. It emphasises the significance of resisting oppression and mass domination.

• Lolita is a 1955 novel written by the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The combination of humour and horror in Lolita is what makes it so beautiful. In this satirical book, vice is depicted as tragically sympathetic rather than scornful. The novel is allegedly the creation of a man who is facing a murder charge but desires to remain anonymous by using the pen name Humbert Humbert. Dolores Haze, the daughter of his landlady, has captured the heart of Humbert Humbert, who has fallen head over heels in love with her. Humbert suffers immensely in the quest of romance, reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs. Haze simply to be near Lolita (Dolores), but when Lo herself starts seeking affection beyond, he will drag her off on a dangerous cross-country escapade, all in the name of passion. Lolita is a flawless, enduring masterwork of obsession, delusion, and passion that is outrageous, brilliant, melancholic, and full of subtle humour.

• Reefis a historical fiction novel written by Sri Lankan-born British author Romesh Gunesekera in 1994. The novel is set in 1961 Sri Lanka, a newly independent country, reeling from the shackles of British colonialism. A boy of eleven, Triton, unwanted at home, is hired by Ranjan Salgado, a sluggish, independently wealthy young marine biologist, to work as a domestic helper in Colombo. This novel evokes memories of Sri Lanka as it approached a time of upheaval. Indeed, I was compelled to read this novel again as I watched the current political and economic upheaval of Sri Lanka on the BBC World Service. This book will make you fall in love with Sri Lanka with its nuanced evocation of friendship and love in a beautiful country.

• Brother, I’m dyingis a 2007 family memoir written by novelist Edwidge Danticat. In 2004, when the conflict between United Nations forces and gang members destroyed his church and placed his life in danger, Dantica, then 81, escaped Haiti to the United States of America. Dantica, one of two brothers, the memoir revolves around, had rejected his family’s requests to emigrate to the United States for 30 years. His intention was to return to Haiti immediately the conflict subsided, to rebuild his church. However, his request for temporary refuge was met with suspicion by the American authorities who examined him in Miami. He passed out and started throwing up during his interview for asylum, and the on-duty doctor declared, “He’s fake.” He died the following day in a Florida hospital, as a result of his reluctance to receive treatment. Dantica reminded me of Ezeulu, the protagonist in Chinua Achebe’s novel ‘Arrow of God’, men of conviction who would not suffer any loss of dignity. This memoir makes for very difficult reading because of the depth of emotions it evokes. Danticat’s father noted after his brother was buried, against his wishes in the United States rather than Haiti: “He shouldn’t be here. None of us would live or die here if our nation were ever given a chance and permitted to exist as a nation just like any other.” That was very profound.

• As if: Idealisation and Ideals,idealization is a fundamental feature of human thought. We build simplified models in our scientific research and utopias in our political imaginations. Concepts like belief, desire, reason, and justice are bound up with idealizations and ideals. Life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encounter. In idealizing, we proceed “as if” our representations were true, while knowing they are not. This is not a dangerous or distracting occupation; Kwame Anthony Appiah shows. Our best chance of understanding nature, society, and ourselves is to open our minds to a plurality of imperfect depictions that together allow us to manage and interpret our world.

• Between Everything and Nothingis a memoir written by Joe Meno about the tragic-journey of two Ghanaians, Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal and their quest for better economic opportunities abroad. The journeys of both men were nothing like they had imagined. Seidu and Razak grew up in the same Nima neighborhood of downtown Accra, and then ended up in South America where they started their dangerous, months-long journey through the tropical forests of South and Central America to cross the border to the United States of America. Their asylum requests in the United States, where they had each spent months in detention is rejected. They then decided to cross the border to Canada rather than wait for their deportation back to Ghana. It is on this torturous border crossing journey through a snowstorm in North Dakota, at a windchill of minus 27 degrees Fahrenheit that both men wind up in a hospital, eventually losing most of their fingers to frostbite.

• Stealing Faces,twelve years ago, serial killer John Cray’s insane passion claimed Kaylie McMillan, but she managed to flee. Likewise Cray. The nightmare still plagues Kaylie twelve years later, endangering both her mental stability and her life since Cray is still present. This crime thriller by Michael Prescott makes for such tension-filled engaging read.

• Dark Notesis a collection of three essays written by James Baldwin. The White Man’s Guilt by James Baldwin, published in 1965 and written during the Civil Rights Movement, is a harsh exposé of the colour-blindness myth. In two of his later pieces, Dark Days (1980) and The Price of the Ticket (1985), he examines the sacrifices Black people made in their struggle for freedom and equality, as well as all the difficulties they confronted. Baldwin has a distinct voice that is distinctively firm, reflective, and poetic. These three articles, which were written in different decades yet feel cohesive as a whole, are built around that voice.

• Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism, the late 1980s IMF-mandated structural adjustment programmes prepared the ground for the early 1990s transformation of a primarily residential neighbourhood into a vibrant shopping centre. Oxford Street is a microcosm of the historical and urban forces that have transformed Accra into the diverse and paradoxical metropolis that it is today, with its tremendous commercialism covering, or coexisting with, significant economic inequities. �Ato Quayson’s book on the urban spatial discourse of Osu’s Oxford Street makes for very excellent reading. In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson examines the dynamics of Accra’s most lively and globally connected commercial neighbourhood, with a particular emphasis on Oxford Street. From the city’s settlement in the middle of the eighteenth century until the present, he charts its development. Along with more general dynamics, such as the histories of colonial and postcolonial town design and the signs of transnationalism visible in Accra’s salsa scene, gym culture, and advertising billboards, he blends his perceptions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space. Quayson observes that the city has been shaped by several planning regimes.
• Path to Poweris the second volume of the memoirs of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. It recounts the extraordinary life of Margaret Thatcher up to his dramatic election as the first woman Prime Minister of Britain in 1979. She recounts bluntly her experiences that propelled her to the top in a society and profession dominated by man. Starting with her Christian upbringing in Grantham, she goes on to describe her time at Oxford university, her marriage to Denis, and election into Parliament when there were just a small number of female MPs. She advanced through the ranks to become Education Secretary, followed by her election as the Leader of the Opposition. In the 1979 general election, she led the Conservative Party to a historic win, becoming Britain’s first female prime minister. Margaret Thatcher’s riveting story is a potent illustration of her lasting legacy.