If you don’t know or care to know, Ghana is one of the few countries in Africa blessed with fecund literary writers who have written thousands of books over the years – with some dead whilst others still alive.
Below is a list of some local and internationally acclaimed Ghanaian literary writers and their respective works: Ama Ata Aidoo – Anowa, Changes, Our Sister Killjoy, No Sweetness here, Dilemma of a Ghost; Efua T. Sutherland – Marriage of Anansewa, Edufa, Voice in the Forest; Ama Darko – The Housemaid; Asare Konadu – The Wizard of Asamang, Woman in her Prime; Francis Selormey – Narrow Path.
The list goes on: Sekyi Kobina – The Blinkards; Ayi Kwei Armah – The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments, The Healers, Kmt: In the house of life; Benjamin Kwakye – The Clothes of Nakedness, The Sun by Night; Kwei J Quartey – Wife of the gods, Children of the Street; Yaba Badoe – True Murder; Glover Boakyewaa – Circles; Ekow Eshun – Black Gold of the Sun; Bediako Asare – Rebels; Kwame Kwei-Armah – Statement of Regret, Fix Up, and others.
For instance, Marriage of Anansewa by Efua T. Sutherland, if adapted for a movie, will be a blockbuster movie produced from Ghana to the world! The story is intriguing! Most Ghanaians who studied literature in Sixth Form or Secondary School and read Marriage of Anansewa will attest to that. I hear our folkloric tale – Anansesem is being used by Disney World for Animation series or sequel.
Yet, instead of Ghanaian filmmakers adapting some of these literacy books or folkloric tales, screen play them and shoot as movies, they rather take delight in stealing (technically called plagiarize) Hollywood and Bollywood movie stories and retell them as Ghanaian movies.