The God Child

'Meditative, gestural, philosophic: a brave reinvention of the immigrant narrative ... Unprecedented' Taiye Selasi'I read this novel very slowly. I didn't want to miss anything ... It is a rich, beautiful book and when I got to the end, I wanted to start again' Chibundu OnuzoMaya grows up in Germany knowing that her parents are different: from one another, and from the rest of the world. Her reserved, studious father is distant; and her beautiful, volatile mother is a whirlwind, with a penchant for lavish shopping sprees and a mesmerising power for spinning stories of the family's former glory – of what was had, and what was lost. And then Kojo arrives one Christmas, like an annunciation: Maya's cousin, and her mother's godson. Kojo has a way with words – a way of talking about Ghana, and empire, and what happens when a country's treasures are spirited away by colonialists. For the first time, Maya has someone who can help her understand...