Ghanaian novelist and author of What Napoleon Could Not Do, DK Nnuro, says his debut novel was inspired by his experiences: ‘Since relocating to the US from Ghana, I have had one foot firmly placed among Black immigrants—Ghanaian immigrants, specifically—and another among Black Americans. It was natural that I would explore the tensions between the two in a novel.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
Everything in Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin series. I was obsessed!
If your life so far was a series of texts, which text (fiction or non-fiction) represents you at this moment?
If only my boring life could be the stuff of fiction or nonfiction. But I realized a major dream this year. So, I would say that any character who realizes a major dream in the course of a literary work should suffice as an analog.
What’s the last thing you read that changed your mind about something?
Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life made me less suspicious of melodrama; or perhaps the appropriate term might be James Wood’s ‘hysterical realism’. In any case, I have been freed of such concerns in my own work...
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