The narrative observes each of the children as they learn the news of their father’s passing, and how it affects them as they struggle with their own challenges in life.

Kweku’s children live overseas in America, where Kweku emigrated before returning to his native Ghana and remarrying. He cannot face the shame of his dismissal, and so he abandons his wife Folasadé leaving her to raise their children on her own, he returns to his native Ghana.

However, things take a turn when Kweku is wrongfully dismissed from his position and attempts to hide it. Everything seems to be going right for the family, most of whom are now living in Massachusetts and it is clear that they have built a wonderful life for themselves. Kweku, who was born into poverty and managed to claw his way out of it, is a respected surgeon who has successfully married and had four children, all of whom are successes in their own right. Folasadé is in a house on another beach, smoking cigarettes and nursing the broken heart she was left with many years ago at the end of her relationship with Kweku.įrom there, the novel revolves mainly around the preparations for Kweku’s funeral. Kweku’s current wife, Anna, is sleeping, unaware of her husband’s condition.

As Kweku meets his end by way of a heart attack, he reflects on old memories, including the births of each of his children, the injustice of the unraveling of his professional life, and his first wife, Folasadé. An old yogi he met living in a perfectly constructed beach house brought Kweku’s design to life. The novel opens as Ghanaian surgeon Kweku Sai is dying in the garden of a house that he designed by sketching it out on a napkin. Although he has left them behind, Kweku’s wife and his four children are left to deal with the fallout of his passing and his unfinished business in the mortal world. The novel is told through multiple points of view in order to give insight into the perspectives of the various family members. The Sai family mourns their father Kweku Sai, struggling to come to terms with his death while working their way through various family issues. Although some of his children barely remember their father’s presence, nevertheless, it rattled them to grow up without him. The narrative continues in this vein to examine what happens to children after they are abandoned and how they each come to terms with the events in their own ways. British-American author Taiye Selasi’s debut novel, Ghana Must Go (2013), touches on themes of parental inadequacy and the kind of shame that would drive a man to abandon his family for fear of appearing inadequate in their eyes.

Ghana must go book review