[1] Ayi Kwei Armah was born in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana to Fante-speaking parents, descending on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga nation.

[2] From 1953 to 1958, Armah attended Prince of Wales College (now known as Achimota School), and won a scholarship to study in the United States, where he was between 1959 and 1963.

In the village of Popenguine, about 70 km from Dakar, he established his own publishing house, Per Ankh: the African Publication Collective,[5] through which his own books are now available.

[7] His first novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, was published in 1968, and tells the story of a nameless man who struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana.

He meets a Portuguese black African named Solo, who has already suffered a mental breakdown, and a white American girl, Aimée Reitsch.

The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering, prophesying a new age.

Armah remained silent as a novelist for a long period until 1995, when he published Osiris Rising, depicting a radical educational reform group that reinstates ancient Egypt at the centre of its curriculum.

Belonging to the generation of African writers after Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, Armah has been said to "epitomize an era of intense despair.