Kojo Laing

B. Kojo Laing or Bernard Kojo Laing (1 July 1946 – 20 April 2017) was a Ghanaian novelist and poet, whose writing is characterised by its hybridity, whereby he uses Ghanaian Pidgin English and vernacular languages alongside standard English. His first two novels in particular – Search Sweet Country and Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) – were praised for their linguistic originality, both books including glossaries that feature the author's neologisms as well as Ghanaian words.

Early life and career Laing was born in Kumasi, capital of Ghana's Ashanti region, the eldest son and fourth of the six children of George Ekyem Ferguson Laing (an Anglican priest who became the first African rector of the Anglican Theological College in Ashanti) and Darling Egan. Baptized as Bernard Ebenezer, he later stopped using his English Christian name, favouring his African identity instead. After some early education in Accra, Laing in 1957 went to continue his primary and secondary schooling in Scotland, attending Bonhill Primary School and the Vale of Leven Academy in Alexandria, Dunbartonshire. Joining the civil service, he remained there until 1979. He subsequently worked for five years as an administrative secretary of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, and in 1984 became head of Saint Anthony's School in Accra, but received significant attention only with the appearance his first novel, Search Sweet Country, which was published in 1986 to critical acclaim, and won prizes including the Valco Award and the Ghana Book Award. Publishers Weekly called it an "intricate, beautifully rambling novel ... a compelling and rewarding read", while the reviewer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette observed: Search Sweet Country' can be read over and over, continually surprising with a fresh turn of phrase or nuance in character, always engaging, always beautiful. The search is worthwhile."

Laing's second novel, Woman of the Aeroplanes, was published in 1988, and has drawn comparison with the work of Ayi Kwei Armah.

Later years

Laing lived in Accra and, from 2005, devoted himself full-time to writing.

He died in Accra aged 70 on 20 April 2017, survived by his first wife and nine children and his second wife and three children. Tributes in The Johannesburg Review of Books noted that Laing was "painfully underappreciated in his lifetime" and called him "one of the unsung heroes of African fiction".

Awards 1976: National Poetry Prize Valco Award 1985: National Novel Prize, Ghana Association of Writers 1993: Valco Award