Why Do I Need To Read Success At War By Koffi Amlado?

(Book Review)
For quite a very long time the international acclaimed author, Koffi Amlado who puts many of his regular audience in suspense after his first novel entitle The Price of Adventure and Passion was published and read worldwide. He has this time round gone beyond a call of duty and published his second novel entitled SUCCESS AT WAR.

Could you image? Koffi has just broken the silence to have just crafted this fascinating story. He has travelled extensively and has brought a new engrossing and moving story. The titled will definitively make your jaw drop; “Success at War.” I just grabbed the copy at Peduase Shell. I just don’t normally buy a novel by chance but I was curious to know what this notorious author was trying to portray by success at war.

Though not voluminous, SUCCESS AT WAR has really satisfied my reading aspiration. The protagonist which was introduced at the initial stage as John, suffered series of challenges as he walks through an ominous life experience in that typical village of Manya. Though John was really talented and was willing to pursue formal education through a hard work and determination, he piteously encountered sequence of challenges, which could be seen as everyday life episode.

Teacher Efo could just be fingered out as the main antagonist after a careful analysis of his cantankerous attitude in school and the momentum invention of Thursday English Illness. He is just one of those egocentric individuals we normally meet at our various workplaces. He has flamboyantly rolled in the story and brought it to its climax. A sample of an article written against him is really laughable. I could not just afford to hide it.

“Manya, a farming community with the only primary school was stormed with brouhaha by pupils and inhabitants, when a forty-two-year-old post-graduate English teacher, Efo, from the University of Ghana, was caught red handed hitting a twelve-year-old class six pupil, John; with an iron bar, and he collapsed.

According to the pupil’s mother, Nana Ama; John abhors school on Thursdays as a result of the Thursday English Illness which he suffers every week; and to many, including the Ministry of Health, disclosed the new epidemic not less than two months. Reports from the community clinic indicated that the twelve-year-old pupil from Manya primary school illness was more or less psychological.

Teacher Efo, the culprit, did not turn out at the time Sefanews stormed the scene. He was later spotted around the clinic while he kept a poker face. Even if Teacher Efo appeared to be quite confident during the interview with our news team, many people including the mother of the victim did not take him at face value. Though the victim was discharged the following day after the incident, investigations are still ongoing to ascertain why and how Thursday English Illness came about in Manya Primary School.

Two lady teachers were interviewed on the cause of the new epidemic, but they appeared nonchalant and were reluctant to talk.

Our news reporter believes the information she has received from the clinic was quite fair and square and deserved no further interrogation when an attempt to speak to the head teacher of the school proved futile.”

Nana Ama demonstrates an African woman position in society by spending her precious time working tirelessly on her farm with the aim of financing her son’s education, even with her carelessness to cause his lost through the process of allowing him to walk alone through the dangerous forest to school in the city. Though Baba, her lazy husband was instrumental in entertaining and hunting animals, he has never impressed me as a character after reading the book from chapter one to twelve, which comprises one hundred and ten pages.

Amlado has just created this intriguing story by skillfully interweaving fictional and historical events. The story appears historical, though, he has categorically declared his aim of crafting a work of fiction.

SUCCESS AT WAR is the second novel of Koffi Amlado I have really read for information and entertainment. It was finally well with my soul when the young journalist, Etonam was influential in writing against child abuse and feminist psychology.

A book I will surely recommend to adolescents to read and appreciate the essence of enduring hardship in life.

John’s life in the village was really terrible as cited by Amlado.

“The father, who was popularly called in the city as Baba, rarely visited the family in the village.

The next day, John woke up and asked his mother;

“Mum, where is my dad? Have I never seen him before? Can you tell me where he is now?” Nana Ama was surprised John asked this mature question.

She looked at him in the face and said;
“John, your father is in the city. He comes here occasionally. The last time he came here was when you were just six months old as a baby.”

John did not understand why his father had to live in the city and only visited them occasionally which was quite eleven years ago.

He walked closer to Nana Ama, his mother and said;

“Mum, Papa lives in the city and he never thought of anybody in this family. This is strange. I have neither seen him nor his handwriting before. Please mum, will you tell me the whole truth about my dear father whom I ………………………”

In this work of fiction, Fafa, a character, demonstrates great passion with relation to an emotional support to Nana Ama; when her husband, Baba leaves them with nothing to survive on, in the village. In the pursuit of greener pasture in the city; probably as a result of his utopian thought of gaining a white colour job which finally turns doomed.

No sooner had you read SUCCESS AT WAR and follow the plot carefully than you understood the real life situation in our villages.