My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa

My First Coup d'Etat chronicles the coming-of-age of John Dramani Mahama in Ghana during the dismal post-independence "lost decades" of Africa. He was seven years old when rumors of a coup reached his boarding school in Accra. His father, a minister of state, was imprisoned for more than a year.

My First Coup d'Etat offers an intimate look at the country that has long been considered Africa's success story. This is a one-of-a-kind book: Mahama's is a rare literary voice from a political leader, and his personal stories work on many levels--as history, as cultural and political analysis, as fables, and, of course, as the memoir of a young man who unbeknownst to him or anything else, would grow up to be president of his nation. Though nonfiction, these are stories that rise above their specific settings and transport the reader into a world all their own, one that evokes the universal human emotions of love, fear, faith, despair, loss, longing, and hope despite all else.