Accra Noir

Synopsis

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Now,Accra joins Lagos, Nairobi, Marrakech, and Addis Ababa in representing the African continent in the Noir Series arena. Accra is the perfect setting for noir fiction. The telling of such tales—ones involving or suggesting death, with a protagonist who is flawed or devious, driven by either a self-serving motive or one of the seven deadly sins—is woven into thefabric of the city’s everyday life … Accra is more than just a capital city. It is a microcosm of Ghana. It is a virtual map of the nation’s soul, a complex geographical display of its indigenous presence, the colonial imposition, declarations of freedom, followed by coupsd’état, decades of dictatorship, and then, finally, a steady march forward into a promising future … Much like Accra, these stories are not always what they seem. The contributors who penned them know too well how to spin a story into a web … It is an honor and a pleasure to share them and all they reveal about Accra, a city of allegories,one of the most dynamic and diverse places in the world. —Nana-Ama Danquah, from the introduction