Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon

Ghanaian author Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon, published by Heinemann in 1995, is a translation of her earlier German novel.  Reader beware, the books is quite sad... and particularly poignant now that sex trafficking and child labor have become major issues on the world stage.  If you wanted a "primer" on how a young woman comes to be trafficked, here it is.  All the collusion, the self-deception, and the criminality are displayed, unflinchingly.  Quite a brave novel, actually, especially for an African writer.  We don't find too many negative novels like this. Its didactic realism and dark tone do not leave much room for reader enjoyment.

Darko's prose is fine, but not anything you shake your head with wonder at (i.e. compare with Cormac McCarthy, the American peddler of deep dark times....). 

I recommend the novel- it is quite short, and would be especially good for students in college doing an African Studies or contemporary African diasporas class.  I am looking forward to reading some of her newer novels.