Yepoka Yeebo’s riveting Anansi’s Gold traces the outlines of Blay-Miezah’s life, shedding light on how he perpetrated his deceptions for years while living in incredible opulence. The author, a freelance journalist, delves into archives across the Atlantic, digs up criminal proceedings and conducts interviews with victims and associates alike, in the process telling us not just about Blay-Miezah, but about the world that enabled him to thrive ... This character study also functions as a key historical text on post-Nkrumah Ghana. We gain behind-the-scenes access to two coups and insight into the functioning of the state intelligence system that ruled before Ghana’s transition to democracy.
It’s a wild tale indeed, brought to life by Yeebo’s intricate research and compelling prose ... Writing about a con as convoluted and extensive as Blay-Miezah’s is no easy endeavor, but in Anansi’s Gold...Yeebo does a phenomenal job explaining how one lie took on a life of its own, one that still hasn’t ended.
Blay-Miezah was slick enough to capture the attention of savvy folk, rather than just the conventionally gullible. As Yepoka Yeebo, a British-Ghanaian journalist, makes clear in her richly entertaining account of his rise and fall, he combined charisma and a silver tongue, attracting both the greedy and the idealistic – the latter seduced by the thought of using the missing billions to boost Ghana’s infrastructure ... Spanning the period from Nkrumah’s student days in the 1930s to the scramble for Blay-Miezah’s assets after his death in 1992, Yeebo’s story is one of a country 'ripped apart by colonialism, then … set upon by vultures.' She has a sharp eye for droll detail and is especially successful in evoking the two decades that followed independence.
