On Tales from Different Tails by Nana Awere Damoah

Kwame Gyan, a Ghanaian journalist, reviews Nana Awere Damoah’s Tales from Different Tails:

“There was a terribly cold Cold War going on between Dede (my wife) and me. It was the type of cold war that will normally result in a man hopping into his car and heading to the spot for a shot (I am sure we all know that ‘spot’ in Ghana means bar. Yes?) Ah well, this cold war had ensued for two days now and from all indications it was going to break our personal Cold War record, that is, our longest Cold War spanning 3 long days and may I say, even colder nights. I had asked Nana Awere Damoah to send me a review copy of Tales from Different Tails but I had not started to read it yet. But on this night with an unfriendly breeze blowing, I grabbed my Galaxy Tab and began reading it.

First I smiled.

Then I smiled some more.

Then I began to giggle.

I giggled some more.

Then a little more.

Dede was getting curious and upset, but more of curious. I feel more comfortable thinking she was more curious than upset. She was wondering what I was smiling and giggling about. So when I began laughing out so loud that tears began streaming down my cheeks, VOILA! She involuntarily ended the two-day old Cold War.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

I handed the Tab to her and headed for a glass of water from the refrigerator across the hall. I needed a drink. Water seemed more appropriate. Good ol’ H2O. I had begun to kiss the tip of the glass when I heard her laugh out louder than I did.

Such was the effect Tales from Different Tails had on me moments after I began reading it. Right from the first paragraph in the first tale when he writes in October Rush that;

“Tina was a timid girl, the sort whose timidity enhanced her countenance. She looked stressed and it was clear she needed a listening ear. As a leader in our hall fellowship, I was an appropriate downloading site for her worries, one to offer the requisite comfort and advice. She had been to look for me in my room on three previous occasions, each time failing to meet me since I kept a busy schedule and hardly studied in my room. I braced myself for what she had to say. After a few minutes of hesitation, during which I sat looking at her, encouraging her in silence, she blurted: “It’s the boys! They are pestering me so, and I just can’t cope!”

Nana carries his reader to a typical scene within the four walls of a typical Ghanaian university and manages to walk you through each setting as though you were sitting around the fires our fathers used to sit to hear stories of our ancestors.

Please continue reading the review here.

Tales from Different Tails will be launched on 1 December 2011 at the Teacher’s Hall Complex near Workers’ College and Tigo Headoffice, Adabraka, Accra, at 6pm. This is Nana Awere Damoah’s third book, the first two are Excursions in My Mind (2008) and Through the Gates of Thought (2010).