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First published in 1960,
This Side Jordan is the debut novel by Margaret Laurence, best known for her modern classics
The Stone Angel and
The Diviners. It throbs with a palpable sense of the urgency of its time, the era of independence in 1950s West Africa. Through a cast of vividly drawn characters, Laurence, who spent most of the '50s living in Ghana, explores the difficult psychological and social borderline between blacks and whites at the end of the colonial period in the city of Accra and its environs. The protagonist, the bespectacled Nathaniel Amegbe, is torn between two worlds: his deeply felt Ashanti past and his present occupation as a schoolteacher. As readers, we're privy to Amegbe's attempts to think his way to a kind of salvation. In all his contradictions, he embodies Africa's struggle to enter the modern world.
Laurence paints characters who are living presences. Johnie Kestoe, for example, a racist company man, "was thin in a sharp, almost metallic way, like a man made of netted wire upon which flesh has been inadequately spread." The stories of Amegbe, Kestoe, their wives, families, business colleagues, and friends, are those of two distinct worlds trying to mesh. The novel works brilliantly at numerous levels: the personal, the historic, the social. And as an exploration of Ghana in that period, it is strikingly believable. This Side Jordan examines greed, racism, pride, and self-betrayal. In the end, however, it is a tale of the human condition and the struggle for redemption. --Mark Frutkin
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
In 1957, the British colony of the Gold Coast broke free to become the independent nation of Ghana. Margaret Laurence’s first novel,
This Side Jordan, recreates that colour-drenched world: a place where men and women struggle with self-betrayal, self-discovery, and the dawning of political pride.
This Side Jordan transcends the traditional limits of the first novel. Its powerful and compassionate characterizations and its themes of exile and community anticipate the five later novels that make up Laurence’s acclaimed Manawaka series. A major work of lasting significance,
This Side Jordan creates echoes in the mind of the reader as resonant as the drums of Ghana.
