A Ghanaian Mystery

In an interesting guest post at Publishing Perspectives, Kwei Quartey talks about his debut novel, Wife of the Gods, a murder mystery set in a rural area of Ghana. Quartey, born in Ghana and now a practicing doctor in California, encountered resistance when he first tried to publish his novel. An agent who declined to accept the manuscript explained, “There are two places on earth that no one has the slightest interest in reading about: Afghanistan and Africa.” Now, a decade later, all that’s changed.

For Quartey, Ghana “provides a compelling background to any crime.” There’s more mystery in Wife of the Gods than the murder committed in a rural area of Ghana:

[E]ven if you put aside the murder, there is intrinsic mystery in the nation’s belief systems alone; for some Ghanaians, the physical world coexists with another realm of gods and their magical powers. These beliefs can considerably complicate a murder investigation.

Wife of the Gods will be published in the US on July 14th.