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Poet and author Nii Ayikwei Parkes joined our Book Club in June 2025 for our review of Tail of the Blue Bird - his 16-year-old crime novel which has an exciting twist.

This book is set in a fictitious village not far from Accra that becomes a crime scene with a difference that brings police and a pathologist to crack the case.

But this is no ordinary crime and we soon find out that with the help of pathologist Kayo, who is forced to solve the case, that the events in the village of Sonokrom expose police corruption, highlight the relationship between so-called development and modernity over traditional practices and the power of language and storytelling.

We got to grill Nii over his book to find out why after 16 years, this book remains a compelling read that has been translated into languages across the globe. So sit tight and enjoy the ride.

Check out Part 2 in the next episode.

Visit Nii Ayikwei Parkes' website: https://www.niiparkes.com/

More on Kwame Gyekeye: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Gyekye

Gendering visions of the postcolonial modernist state through names: a literary onomastic analysis of Nii Ayikwei Parkes’s Tail of the Blue Bird (2009)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2024.2404209

If you’d like to join our book club and connect with other bookworms, email us at [email protected] for more details and if you've read Tail of a Blue Bird tell us in the comments if you agreed/disagreed with our thoughts.

The music in this episode is made exclusively for AKADi Magazine by Kyekyeku and the Super Opong Stars and is called 'Life No Dey Easy'.
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