ABSTRACT
Benjamin Kwakye is arguably Ghana's most celebrated male fiction writer in the last three decades. He is the winner of double Commonwealth Prizes for his novels and has also won numerous awards for his creative writing in the United States. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Kwakye, in this rare interview, discusses African prison literature and the influences first-generation African fiction writers on his work. He also reflects on the postcolonial condition in Ghana, citing examples from his family background to explain the impact of dictatorships and misrule on Africa's economy and social structure. He takes both a personal and public route in this exchange, using his childhood in Ghana during the uncertain years of coups to explain the anxiety and uncertain that characterized the African landscape following the years of independence. His focus in this interview, the depiction of the prison experience in modern African fiction, is very informative. Kwakye names several African writers of fiction and poetry, and he attempts to explain how their works helped to establish a standard of the narratives coming out of Africa that explore the postcolonial reality from the perspectives of Africa's creative writers.
