Amma Darko Biography
Amma Darko is a Ghanaian novelist born in 1956. Thorough research is essential for her and she spends a lot of time with interviews and in archives.
For the novel “Faceless”, she put on dingy clothes and mingled with the inhabitants of the suburb “Sodom and Gomorrha” in Accra.
Amma Darko Age
Darko was born on 26th June 1956 in Tamale, Ghana. She is 63 years old as of 2019.
Amma Darko Early Life
Amma was born in Koforidua, Ghana and grew up in Accra. She studied in Kumasi, where she received her diploma in 1980. Then she worked for the Science and Technology Center in Kumasi. During the 1980s, she lived and worked for some time in Germany where she stayed from 1981 until 1987 and wrote her first novel.
After her return from Germany, her first novel was published in German translation. The English publisher Heinemann was to bring out the original version later on.
In 1998/1999, she had a scholarship from “Akademie Schloss Solitude”. J.M. Coetzee had appointed her. She contributed to the Solitude publications, “Lexikon der sperrigen Wörter” (2010) and “Solitude Atlas” (2015).
In 2008, she received the most important literary prize in her country, the Ghana Book Award. She regularly takes part in the authors’ congresses and literature festivals all over the world. Her books are often objected to scientific analysis and there are many Bachelor and Master Thesis about different aspects of her work.
Professor Victor C. Odamtten has devoted a book to her: “Broadening the Horizon”, containing articles from different researchers about her writings. Faceless has been selected for the official literature list of the “West Africa Examination Council for Senior Secondary Schools” and belongs now to the West African school canon.
Amma Darko Career
Ghanaian novelist Amma Darko, the author of Beyond the Horizon and The Housemaid, provides an exemplar of the challenges facing women writers in the region today: lack of time and space to write, lack of literary mentors, inadequate access to books written by sister writers on the continent or even in their own countries.
Despite these difficulties, Darko has persisted in writing novels that speak vividly to contemporary issues for African women. The dissertation analyzes the daily practices that have enabled her to develop a writing life. The publishing history of her works, and the cultural contexts in which she is read now and may be read in the future at home and abroad.
The publishing landscape for African women writers like Darko consists of multinational publishers, small Third World advocacy presses, and struggling indigenous publishing houses. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses in the circle of cultural production. She may become more widely known locally through the third.
Although there is evidence of a “book famine” caused by economic crises in West Africa, increasing numbers of West African women do read for pleasure and are hungry for good stories that relate to their lives, whether those are Western bestsellers or African-centered romance fiction.
Darko’s works, until recently little known in Ghana or the U.S., bridge the gap between the high-culture literature of the classroom and low-culture popular fiction. Amma Darko represents a new generation that is writing its way forward.
from an existing West African women’s literary tradition to new possibilities in themes, styles, and readership. In contrast to the image of African women writers as “silenced,” the appendix identifies 159 West African women who have published novels or short story collections in the last seventy years.
Amma Darko Novels
Her novels illustrate everyday life in Ghana. Darko’s first novel, Beyond the Horizon, was originally published in German. Her most recent novels, Faceless and Not without flowers were published in Ghana.
Darko’s work has been discussed in Vincent O. Odamtten’s book Broadening the Horizon: Critical Introductions to Amma Darko, in the 2001 doctoral thesis by Louise Allen Zak “Writing her way: a study of Ghanaian novelist Amma Darko”, and in several academic journals.
Amma Darko Books
1. Beyond the Horizon (Der verkaufte Traum). 0-1.
Heinemann/Schmetterling-Verl. ISBN 978-0-435-9099
Darko’s first novel is influenced by her impressions of Germany, observing the interaction between Germans and Ghanaian immigrants. The book is about a young woman, Mara, who follows her husband to Germany, not knowing that he has married a German in the meantime. Though the book deals with serious topics such as illegal immigration, illegitimate marriage, and prostitution, there is never any bitter morality in it.
2. Spinnweben (“Cobwebs”; no English edition).
Schmetterling-Verl. ISBN 978-3-926369-17-8
Her second novel is a reflection of roots. There are dialogues between a Ghanaian living in German and the German friends around her.
3. Verirrtes Herz (“Stray heart”; no English edition).
Schmetterling-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-89657-119-9
This is the first book that is completely set in Ghana. The young protagonist, Kesewa, is illiterate. She has to work hard for her parents and brothers and is unable to attend school regularly. In her adult life, she becomes distrustful and envious and causes a lot of trouble.
4. Faceless (Die Gesichtslosen).
Sub-Saharan Publishers/Schmetterling-Verl. ISBN 978-9988-550-50-9.
A novel about a middle-class woman coming into contact with street children who are living in a part of Accra known as “Sodom and Gomorrhah”.
5. Not Without Flowers.
Sub-Saharan Publishers. ISBN 978-9988-647-13-1.
In this book, the reader encounters some figures and institutions from the preceding novel. One of the central characters, Aggie, works for the NGO MUTE, which aims to create an archive and an alternative library. Aggie’s mother has a mental disorder and is kept in a prayer camp. Idan, Aggie’s husband, starts an affair with the very young Randa.
6. Between Two Worlds.
Sub-Saharan Publishers. ISBN 978-9988647933.
In this novel, two worlds converge: A Ghanaian man and a German woman fall in love in Germany, in the 1960s. Many years later, their grown-up twin daughters are confronted with information about the collapse of their parents’ marriage. The reader sees the situation from both angles.
He gets to know how the man grows up in the British colony Gold Coast and the woman in post-war Germany. The novel also has a spiritual dimension. The topic of twins is very important as well as the natural religion of the Akan people in Ghana with their fetish and clan priests, libations and drumming. As in her previous novels, Darko’s humor shines through the serious topic.
7. The Necklace of Tales.
ASIN B00YVNNH9I.
This young readers’ book brings the charm of the traditional Kweku Ananse stories into the context of our modern world. For centuries, the stories of this African folktale character were handed down orally through storytelling. The stories originated from the Ashantis, who form part of the Akan tribe of Ghana.
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