No One Dies Yet

by Kobby Ben Ben

Overview

A genre-breaking novel from a powerful new African voice 

It is 2019, The Year of Return. Ghana is inviting Black diasporans to return and get to know the land of their enslaved ancestors. Elton, Vincent, and Scott arrive from America to explore Ghana’s colonial past, and to experience the country's underground queer scene. Their visit and activities are narrated by two very different Ghanians: the exuberant and rebellious Kobby, who is their guide to Accra’s privileged and queer circles; and Nana, the voice of tradition and religious principle. Neither is very trustworthy and the tense relationship between them sets the tone for what turns into a gripping, energetically told, and often funny tale of murder reminiscent of the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Graham Greene, Chinua Achebe, and Alain Mabanckou.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609457563
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	202,278
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kobby Ben Ben was born in Ghana, where he is a prominent book reviewer and runs the African Book Club and the Ghana Must Read website. His eccentric Instagram book blog, @bookworm_man, has caught the attention of Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo, as well as Maaza Mengiste and Petina Gappah, among others. No One Dies Yet is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/04/2023

Three American gay men travel to Ghana to pay homage to their enslaved ancestors and explore the country’s queer underground scene in the audacious debut from Ghanaian book critic Ben Ben. Married couple Vincent and Scott and their constantly horny friend Elton are in Accra for the Year of Return, a 2019 government initiative encouraging tourism from Black diasporans. The trio are squired through the city and coastal forts by the novel’s primary narrators, both unreliable: Kobby, an aspiring novelist who met Elton through the dating app Man4Man, and Nana, who trawls Facebook in search of Americans who will help him get a visa. (The two regard each other with open disdain.) When local tabloids report that a serial killer is on the loose, the government responds with denials, afraid the news will scare away the “Returnees.” The men do indeed brush up against a murder, but to identify who ends up dead or why would spoil half the fun of this wildly inventive novel. Embedded within the deadly tale are interludes voiced by ghosts of the enslaved, unapologetically raunchy sex scenes, and skewering portrayals of nearly everyone Kobby encounters, including the publishers who reject his crime novel pitch and prefer fiction about the trans-Atlantic slave trade, cynical Europeans recolonizing former slave-trading outposts with resorts, and the tourists who condescend to their Ghanaian hosts while romanticizing long-past traditions. The sheer wonder of Ben Ben’s narrative design anchors the reader in the immersive maelstrom of voices. The results are propulsive and deliciously irreverent in equal measure. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

★ “Three American gay men travel to Ghana to pay homage to their enslaved ancestors and explore the country’s queer underground scene in the audacious debut from Ghanaian book critic Ben Ben...wildly inventive...The sheer wonder of Ben Ben’s narrative design anchors the reader in the immersive maelstrom of voices. The results are propulsive and deliciously irreverent in equal measure.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

★ “A cinematic, cutting, and smart debut novel...Ben Ben rejects prevailing colonial narratives with this graphic rock opera of murder, sex, and tourism.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Kobby Ben Ben’s debut, No One Dies Yet, is fascinating, funny, surreal, and provocative, its genre-warping murder tale fusing queer autofiction with geopolitics and mystery with erotica.”—ELLE Magazine

“Dark, unsettling, utterly addictive.”—African Arguments

“We’re walked through the who and why in a sometimes funny, sometimes spicy tale.”—Book Riot

“This may be one of my favorite novels ever. It’s so funny. It’s like Patricia Highsmith traded her self-loathing for a decent sense of humor.”—CrimeReads

“A book that brims with possibilities, contradictions, jokes, puzzles, detours, ambiguities, secrets and metafictional tricks and twists.”—Yagnishsing Dawoor, The Guardian

From the Publisher