Between Two Worlds

Between Two Worlds is Amma Darko¿s fifth novel to be published in English. All Amma Darko¿s novels give an initial impression of being, in the words of Ato Quayson in his discussion of Faceless, ¿relentlessly issuedriven¿ (Quayson 2014: 218). Perhaps the theme of inter racial and (more importantly) inter-cultural marriage that governs Between Two Worlds is not an ¿issue¿ in quite the same sense that poverty, social injustice and predatory sex are issues, but such issues underlie the problems of both Ursula and Jofri. Among Ghanaian writers, Amma Darko holds a special and highly individual place. Rather unexpectedly, she can be interestingly compared to Kojo Laing, even though he is a very different kind of novelist. Like him, she takes a resolutely non-academic approach to writing. They share a fascination with the journeys people make between the worlds of Europe and Ghana, and between spiritual worlds, although the spiritual worlds that interest them are very different. Amma Darko is far more interested than Laing in the day to-day relations among individuals, and between the individual and the community, and Laing does not seem to share her passionate concern for the downtrodden and the dispossessed. Yet from this engaged perspective on living in two worlds, or perhaps one should really say multiple worlds, Darko arrives at another shared concern, for spiritual wholeness. The moral and spiritual integrity of the individual cannot be separated from the integrity of the community within which the individual exists.