Sargrenti is the name by which Major General Sir Garnet Wolseley, KCMG (1833 - 1913) is still known in the West African state of Ghana.

Kofi Gyan, the 15-year old boy who spits in Sargrenti's eye, is the nephew of the chief of Elmina, a town on the Atlantic coast of Ghana. On Christmas Day, 1871, Kofi's godfather gives him a diary as a Christmas present and charges him with the task of keeping a personal record of the momentous events through which they are living. This novel is a transcription of Kofi's diary.

Elmina town has a long-standing relationship with the...

"I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave; inside me, here and here, I am still a free woman."

During a period of 400 years, European slave traders ferried some 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. In the Americas, teaching a slave to read and write was a criminal offense. When the last slaves gained their freedom in Brazil, barely a thousand of them were literate. Hardly any stories of the enslaved and transported Africans have survived.

Ama is an enslaved African woman. In Brazil, old and ill, she is determined that the story of her life shall survive for future generations. Her story is one of violence and heartache, but also of courage, hope, determination, and ultimately, love. Since Ama is blind, she has to dictate to her long separated only son, Kwame Zumbi. Kwame - named Zacharias Williams by the white Christians who have raised him - considers her an ugly old pagan and has little interest in doing more than is necessary to fulfill his obligation to her. But the acts of hearing and writing down the details of his...

2050.

The global village has disintegrated.

The Third World War, ending in a stalemate, has left the planet split between two hostile powers, each with a captive sphere of influence.

The Atlantic Ocean has become an American sea.
West Africa has become a desert of failed states and anarchy, dotted with mines and oil rigs, stockaded and armed by U. S. corporations.
From their island outpost of St. Thomas (SAo Tome), the Americans dispatch expeditions of geologists and mining engineers into the dangerous interior of the Dark Continent to search for untapped...