Journal Entry – ‘The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born’ by Ayi Kwei Armah

I read this book twice, once last year purely for pleasure and once this term as preparation for an politics essay. The different readings yielded very different results. As a human story, the novel is a very powerful account of a man struggling to maintain his honour and integrity when all those around him are seduced by corruption and greed. That he is prepared to risk his family and livelihood should lend the novel a life-afirming quality; an assertion of man’s potential for moral goodness. Instead, the futility of his struggle demonstrates