ayi kweyi amar opens his novel by describing an old choking commuter bus arriving at a bus

stand,on the bus the conductor is careless and uses abusive language to both the
passengers on board and the driver.

In fact the writer uses the bus to symbolise the state of ghana soon after independence-
corruption and disorderly and immorality especially of the laeders.
as the writer builds up plot of the novel;he carries corruption as the main theme of the
book.poverty is also shown by the writer to be the main problem facing the ghanian people
despite of being free from colonialism.he affirm that only the masters changed but the
situation is all the same-the masters being black now contrary to the white masters during
colonialism.the writer also use general filthy state to describe how corrupt and evil ghana is,
after independence.in this book the man is used to represent the majority o fthe society who
are poor as compared to leaders like coomson who are rich and they live in luxurious
estates.. unlike the poor who live in the slums.
also embezzlement of public funds is shown by using characters such as coomson and other
leaders.
the writer finishes his novel by a coup detat as a solution to increased socio-economic
problems but is it all good?for a policeman is seen taking bribe soon after the revolution....

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Author Ayi Kwei Armah
Country Ghana
Publisher
Publication date 1968

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is a novel by Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei
Armah. It was published in 1968. It tells the story of a nameless man who
struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana.
He works at a railway station and is approached with a bribe; when he
refuses, his wife is furious and he can't help feeling guilty despite his
innocence. The novel expresses the frustration many citizens of the newly-
independent states in Africa felt after attaining political independence. Many
African states like Ghana followed similar paths in which corruption and the
greed of African elites became rampant. Corruption in turn filtered down to
the rest of society and the 'rot' that characterized post-independent Ghana in
the last years of Nkrumah is a dominant theme in the book. The novel
provides a description of the existential angst of the book's hero who
struggles to remain clean when everyone else around him has succumbed to
'rot'

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

by Ayi Kwei Armah
Born in Ghana in 1939, Ayi Kwei Armah participated in the events that took
Ghana from British colony to independent country. His first novel, The
Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born established him as a writer of world renown.
The work, whose title has an intentional misspelling taken from an inscription
on a bus, portrays both the euphoria of independence and the disillusionment
that followed in Ghana. It was a sobering period, in which the early promise
of freedom gave way to economic malaise, political corruption, and continued
financial dependence on Europe. Since 1968 Armah has generally lived
outside Ghana, and occasionally outside Africa, though remaining a vital
figure in African literature. His subsequent novels have continued to address
the issues of modern African culture. A vocal proponent of pan-African unity,
Armah has proposed the adoption of Swahili as an African lingua franca,
championed African literatures past and present, and deplored the continued
cultural domination of Europe and the United States.