[2] Duodu was born in Asiakwa[1] in eastern Ghana and educated at Kyebi Government Senior School and the Rapid Results College, London, through which he took his O-Level and A-Level examinations by correspondence course.
[3] He began writing while still at school, the first story he ever wrote ("Tough Guy In Town") being broadcast on the radio programme The Singing Net and subsequently included in Voices of Ghana,[4] a 1958 anthology edited by Henry Swanzy that was "the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays".
The "gab boys" of the title – so called because of their gabardine trousers – are the sharply dressed youths who hang about the village and are considered delinquent by their elders.
These themes come together in a very compassionate discussion of the way that individual people, rich and poor, are pushed to compromise themselves as they try to navigate a near-chaotic transitional society.
"[2] In June 2010 Duodu was a participant in the symposium Empire and Me: Personal Recollections of Imperialism in Reality and Imagination, held at Cumberland Lodge, alongside other speakers who included Diran Adebayo, Jake Arnott, Margaret Busby, Meira Chand, Michelle de Kretser, Nuruddin Farah, Jack Mapanje, Susheila Nasta, Jacob Ross, Marina Warner, and others.