It all began with an afternoon of catching up. My old university friend and I started with light banter, sharing laughs over our campus memories, late-night study sessions, and the endless inside jokes. But, as conversations often do, ours shifted, taking us back even further—to our secondary school literature classes. We found ourselves talking about the impact of those books, the lessons hidden in pages we once read just to pass exams. Little did we know then how much they’d come to mean.
One book we discussed, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah, struck a chord. Though written years ago, its message still speaks to the realities we see around us today. The novel explores life in post-colonial Ghana, where the dream of freedom from colonial rule clashes with the harshness of everyday struggles, a place where corruption is the norm, and honest people feel isolated. Ghana’s story back then feels all too familiar for us in Nigeria today.
