Memoirs & Coffee Book Group to Meet

The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, June 25 at 10:30 am in the library’s Community Room.  Pat Kennedy-Grant, Readers’ Services Manager for the library, will lead the discussion of “My First Coup d’Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa” (2012) by John Dramani Mahama. [The author will not be present.]

“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.  The author’s is a rare literary voice from a political leader—he has been President of Ghana since July 2012—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, would grow up to be president of his nation.  

A reviewer for the Washington Post described the book as “A graceful memoir and striking literary debut…A collection of remarkable vignettes that blend a historian’s sensibility with a novelist’s prose, Mahama captures the evolution of that consciousness and, with it, glimpses of a nation’s recovered soul.”

There is no charge and no sign-up is needed to join the discussion.  Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.