A novel that draws on West African folklore and the mythic life of rivers.
A young man returns to his family's land after years away and finds it changed — not by what time has done, but by what the water has begun to remember.
Beneath the River's Spirit moves between contemporary Ghana and an older, less stable register where rivers keep ledgers and the past is not always content to stay where it was put. It is a novel about inheritance, and about the strange courtesy a place extends to those who return.
Asare's debut novel is rooted in the storytelling traditions of southern Ghana but speaks to anyone who has ever gone home and found that home had its own opinions about the matter.
A short passage. The full opening is available in the Kindle preview, or by request from the house.
The river had not forgotten him. That was the trouble.
He had spent ten years assuming it would — and arrived to find every stone in its bed waiting, with a list.